


Devil's Tower

by Guede



Category: Teen Wolf (TV), The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Alpha Stiles Stilinski, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Alternate Universe - Western, BAMF Lydia Martin, Blow Jobs, Depression, F/M, Full Shift Werewolves, Gallows Humor, Grief/Mourning, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Jealousy, Knotting, Laura Hale Lives, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Outdoor Sex, Pack Dynamics, Polyamory Negotiations, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rimming, Rough Sex, Slow Build, Survivor Guilt, Unrequited Love, Weird West, Werewolf Culture, Werewolf Senses, Werewolf Turning, Werewolves in Heat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:47:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 110,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23164972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: When Sam Chisolm made a deal to see Bartholomew Bogue’s death, he wasn’t honestly thinking about anything beyond that.  So it’s as much of a surprise to him as to everyone else when, after Rose Creek, he gets called upon to make good on his bargain.4/16/20:Stiles and Sam chatting post-story, alpha to alpha.Notes:This is mostly aboutThe Magnificent Sevencharacters and the TW characters (who come from aprior storyI wrote) are very much supporting cast; they don't show up at all till chapter three.  You should be able to figure out the TW backstory via contextual references and my endnotes, including TW werewolf mythology, so TW knowledge or reading my other story isn't required (although it'll make the in-jokes funnier).
Relationships: Chris Argent/Lydia Martin, Goodnight Robicheaux/Billy Rocks, Joshua Faraday/Vasquez, Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Sam Chisolm/Goodnight Robicheaux, Sam Chisolm/Goodnight Robicheaux/Billy Rocks, Sam Chisolm/Joshua Faraday/Vasquez
Comments: 81
Kudos: 38





	1. Chisholm

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Bittersweet Creek](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8189632) by [Guede](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede). 



They hadn’t gotten more than a couple miles out of town before Vasquez, dizzy with blood loss and pigheaded about it, started to slide off his horse. Sam came up on his bad side and was taking the brunt of his swearing when Red Harvest sloped up on the other and tapped him on the back of the head.

He went down quietly, and the most trouble he gave them was with trying to get those legs of his around the horses as they laid him down in a shady spot. Red Harvest got some water from a nearby creek while Sam took a look at the arm. He wasn’t much of a doctor, in the sense that nobody living had ever sat him down and showed him the professional way of doing it, but he’d been through the War and he could tell when something needed amputation and something didn’t.

This wound didn’t. Sam sat down and started a fire, and when Red Harvest came back, he rolled up his sleeves. Red Harvest took a look at the knife Sam was heating, rolled his eyes, and went off for a couple minutes. Then he came back with some leather pouches in his hands and elbowed Sam over to watch the water boil.

Something like an hour later, Vasquez was set, if still out cold, and Sam and Red Harvest were staring at each other over the fire. 

“How hard did you hit him?” Sam finally asked, when his neck started to get tight on him.

Red Harvest shrugged. Kept staring.

Sam pressed his lips together, then looked away. Fight was over, he thought, lifting one hand to squeeze at the back of his neck. He kneaded the muscles there, but they didn’t get any looser. Just pulled from lower and lower down in his back, till he felt as if his body was going to get up and start kicking up if he kept going. Reminded him of a jumping skeleton on a stick, a children’s toy, he’d seen once.

He grimaced and stopped pulling, and looked up at the sky. It’d been a beautiful, almost cloudless day for it—the smoke from all the gunfire, especially the Gatling gun, had changed that, but a wind had picked up and he could tell it’d clear things away. Still not quite noon, even.

“Shit,” Sam muttered.

He looked over at the road leading out of town, then back at the sky. For a second, he…something in his neck twisted, tight, and he wrenched at it before he could help himself. The twist turned into a sharp, deep pain, forcing a gasp out of him. His head tilted back and he saw the blue sky flicker black, just for a second.

Then it was blue again, blue and beautiful, and he was breathing easy. He gasped again, even though he didn’t have to, then settled down. Red Harvest was still staring but that’d be as it’d be, he thought. Either the man would stay or he wouldn’t, same as it’d been all along.

Sam stretched his back, then loosened his belt to take some weight off. He felt the eyes on that, felt the judgment too, but hell, he figured, somebody came up to shoot him now—he knew there wasn’t anyone left for it. Not a single one.

He breathed, and took his belt off, and waited for dark to fall.

* * *

Going back into Rose Creek was an expedition all of its own, with the way the dynamite had torn up the ground. They’d made some headway on dragging the bodies together, but if it wasn’t flesh, it stayed where it’d fallen. Sam turned his ankle a few times, and almost pitched himself into one of the trenches a few times more, before he’d worked his way around to the official graveyard.

He didn’t have to do much to avoid eyes. Nobody seemed to be in town; he guessed the tired townsfolk had retreated to one of the neighboring ranches to rest up, maybe wherever they’d taken the children. Hadn’t been rightly paying attention, but given what the Gatling gun had done to the main street, it’d make the most sense. Anyway, it was useful, given how his body wasn’t much more than a mass of aches and bruises. He hadn’t broken anything, that he could tell; he’d taken some cuts from flying debris but that had all scabbed over. He still hadn’t gotten away with it.

Four coffins, lined up on the north end of the churchyard. He picked his way over to them, then pressed a heavy palm against the nearest as he eased down beside it, knees shaking. They’d nailed down the tops, but had gotten worn out halfway through digging the holes, as far as he could tell. Shallow, misshapen ditches on the other side, and the preacher had promised to treat them well. “Kind,” Sam said to himself. “Be kind to the dead.”

He looked around. He hadn’t had any suitable gear with him to take. Maybe Red Harvest could’ve found something, but Sam hadn’t asked, just left the man, still staring, by Vasquez’s side. He hadn’t been that surprised Vasquez was still sleeping—didn’t seem like a fever, but battles would do that to you, keep you twisted up and up and up and you wouldn’t notice till hours later, when suddenly everything unwound. They weren’t so far out that he thought the man’s bounty would endanger him, but still, it was in the open and he’d been grateful that Vasquez would have the company. One less for him.

Somebody had left a pick leaning against the fence. Sam got himself up, retrieved it, and then set about prying off the coffin tops.

Billy and Jack looked…different. Redressed, clean, blood even washed from Jack’s beard. Somebody’s Sunday best—homespun, local tailoring, but neat and tidy and making them look like they’d just come from sermon to lie down and rest. Faraday was a different story. They’d found all of him, Sam decided after a moment’s examination. That much, at least, he didn’t have to do. 

Goodnight wasn’t quite right. He was still in the suit he’d been wearing, with the bulletholes even stitched up, but…Sam moved to the other side of the coffin, then had it. Broken leg, dislocated arm, and they hadn’t matched the limbs back up to the body, just pushed them into the coffin. He grimaced, thinking that and Faraday over, and then just shook his head. Hell if he knew, he thought. He hadn’t ever been thinking past the day Bogue died.

Well, the man was dead now. “Made it up to you,” Sam said quietly, thinking of his mother, his sisters. 

He rubbed at his neck, fingers slipping past the collar onto the scarring, and then took another breath. Pulled a pouch out of his pocket, shook its contents into his palm, and looked again at the bodies. 

It was clear skies above, the moon high and nearing full. He felt tight again, skin stretched to splitting. Not the nervy prickle when someone had a gun on your back, but something else entirely, something that made the inside of his mouth taste dry and wet at the same time, like chewing ashes. He shook his shoulders, which of course didn’t get rid of it, then took another breath. Goddamn it, he needed to do this. That’d been the deal, and he kept his word.

“Make it up to you,” Sam muttered, bending down by the first—Billy’s—coffin. He picked out one of the wolf-claws, scratched it across the back of his hand till he drew blood, and then pulled at Billy’s clothes till he found an open bullet-wound.

When Sam stuffed the claw into the wound, he was expecting—thunder, lightning, some vaudeville surprise. Something big and dark and violent. In retrospect, he should’ve remembered it’d been a clear, calm day in Lincoln too.

Billy didn’t move, exactly, but something about his body seemed to…glaze over. It was like that spot in Sam’s eye just went foggy for a second, and when he blinked, Billy was different. The hole under Sam’s fingers was gone, and so was the claw, and that made Sam yank his hand back and stare at the body, his nerves jangling like they hadn’t been in the fight. But he was still cold, Sam thought. He moved his hand to Billy’s throat and there was no pulse. 

So he just needed to finish up and get it over with. He got up and went over to Faraday’s coffin, dropping the claw into one of the gaping wounds under the sheet somebody had wrapped him with, and then did the same with Goodnight. He was going to do the same with Jack when somebody coughed.

Sam jerked around on one knee, hand going down to his bare hip. He’d left his guns with Red Harvest and Vasquez. The churchyard fence and the street beyond didn’t show any faces, or lights, but Sam was cursing as he shifted back against the coffin, groping for the pick.

 _‘Men I respect,’_ said Jack Horne, and Sam turned around to see a pale, flickering shape of the man standing at the other end of the coffin. Except—

Horne looked different. Well, of course, part of Sam thought blankly, the church’s back door was visible right through him, down to the newest splintered holes in it. And also he was…he was peaceful.

Peaceful. He wasn’t exactly smiling, but even when he had smiled, back when he’d been alive, he’d had a kind of glaze to it, like the sunlight off paper-thin ice. That was gone now, long gone in the face of the rounded warmth gently and inexorably creeping over Sam as he and the other man locked eyes.

Sam’s shoulders twitched. He tried to still them and his whole back spasmed so that he had to drop his knee against the coffin cover to steady himself. When he looked back up, Horne was gone.

Body was still there. Lying against the wood slats like so much clay wrapped up in clothes. Didn’t make Sam feel anything, looking at it, and for some reason—given what he was out here for—that raised the hairs on the back of his neck.

“Shit,” he muttered, and took a breath, trying to gather himself enough to put the lids back. Then twisted halfway around, hand going down to his bare hip, as Emma Cullen startled over by the churchyard fence.

“Mr. Chisolm?” she whispered. By the way she was holding herself, she’d already noticed the coffins. “What—what are you—”

Just then a thump came from one of them, Faraday’s. Both she and Sam whirled around to face it. She’d brought a gun with her, and as it rose out of her skirts, it briefly leveled at his shoulder. Then she came into the yard, sucking her breath, and tried to march past him. She was shaking all over, when he put his hand on her shoulder, but it took him a couple tries to take the gun from her.

“Wait,” he said. “Let me.”

“What are you _doing_?” she hissed, voice steadying with anger. “Mr. Chisolm, I thought—I thought you and them—”

“It ain’t about the money,” Sam snapped, guessing where her mind was going. There was a second thump, and then a slow, erratic rustling noise started up in _Goodnight’s_ box. “Vasquez was the only one with a bounty, anyway.”

“Well, then what are you doing?” Cullen asked. Her eyes flicked from him to the coffins and back again. She wasn’t running, but she grabbed onto the rifle stock again and seemed likely to wrestle him for it. “What is going on in there? What’s happening?”

Sam bit down on his first answer, which was that he had no idea. He thought he could hear breathing now. Harsh, uneven pants. Something scraped against the wood. Then again. It reminded him all of a sudden of the root under his feet, the way his toenails had curled off all the bark from it by the time they’d cut him down.

He took in a deep breath, and shouldered off Cullen’s attempts to twist the rifle from him. “This isn’t your business,” he said, checking whether the rifle was loaded. “It’s mine. I told you I’d bring them, and I told you I’d give you your town back. That’s all done now.”

Cullen went quiet. She was looking at him, he could feel the gaze crawling over his ear, but he kept his eyes on the boxes. Billy’s was inching from side to side as whatever was in it flopped around and Faraday’s kept up with the scrabbling, but he was thinking Goodnight’s. Goodnight had always been one for timing, rambling on about respect and the ways of showing it. If someone was waiting on him, why, it didn’t bear thinking to disappoint them.

“Mr. Chisolm,” Cullen said. Her fingers tightened on his wrist when he didn’t look at her. She wasn’t shaking so much now, and her voice had an odd calmness to it, one he didn’t think had anything to do with liking what she was seeing. “Are you sure—”

“I got to,” he said before he could help himself. He took a step back to get under control, taking Cullen with him, and then turned so he could push her out the gate if he had to. “I said I would. I brought them.”

She pulled in the air to say something, but before she could, a dark shape curved up out of Goodnight’s coffin. The movement of it seemed to punch the air, drawing a shivery, small noise from Cullen. Sam himself couldn’t help a jerk backwards and that’s what kept him from immediately shooting it.

The wolf landed on the dirt right by the box and stared at Sam with blank blue eyes. Wasn’t anything in there, Sam realized after a long, heart-stopping moment. Nothing. It was on its feet, but it might as well have been a statue. It wasn’t _alive_.

It wasn’t attacking him either. It was just—it was just standing there, looking at him, as if it was waiting on _him_. And he…he started to lift the rifle, then lowered it. He knew, somehow, it wasn’t going to attack him, and he…well, he wasn’t going to shoot it. 

Cullen’s yank at his arm almost put him off his balance. He slipped, then steadied himself, cursing, and when he looked up again, there were two more of them standing by the coffins, each with that flat, shallow look in its eyes. “Shit,” he said under his breath. This wasn’t—he swallowed hard and made himself keep looking at them, made himself think. He’d brought them, like he’d told her. He’d brought them, that made him responsible. “Look—”

“Why isn’t he coming out?” Cullen asked.

Sam looked at her, and she was nodding at Horne’s coffin. He grimaced. “Didn’t want to.”

“He…didn’t want to?” Cullen asked, frowning. Her eyes kept going to the wolves, but they weren’t moving. 

“His family, I think,” Sam said. The words bit as they came off his tongue.

Some of that must have showed, since Cullen looked sharply at him, not minding the wolves at all. Dark as it was in the shadow of the steeple, he could clearly see the thoughts playing out over her face. Fear didn’t last so long, and that he was expecting. He wasn’t expecting her to get past the disbelief so quick, and settle back on the bleak determination that’d brought her up to his horse, that long two weeks ago.

“Funerals are in the morning,” she said. “They’ll notice the weight.”

“Yeah,” Sam agreed. He eased up and lowered the rifle till its butt was resting against the ground, looking back at the wolves. Then took a step over, to the nearest cross, so he could lean the rifle against it. None of them moved. They wouldn’t until he was ready, he thought, and then he frowned. He didn’t like the feel of that and turned back to Cullen. “I don’t think either of us are up to digging the rest of those holes.”

Cullen pressed her lips together. She started to speak and then caught herself, and in her eyes he could see one last spark of terror. “You’re leaving, after this?” she asked.

“I…” Sam straightened “…this isn’t the place for this, Mrs. Cullen. War’s over.”

Pebbles rattled. They both turned, and Goodnight—the wolf out of Goodnight’s coffin, it stared back at him, one step closer to Sam. Wasn’t any more alive in there than it had been.

Cullen drew a long, considering breath. “Wait here,” she said. “I’ll get something to fill them up.”

* * *

Rocks weren’t what Cullen brought over. Smart woman, she thought about it and brought a handcart of sandbags from down the street, then got a second load while Sam was busy stuffing the clothes left in the coffin. Because the clothes were left, and so were gunbelts and hats and knives and playing cards.

“Here,” Cullen said, breathless, as she heaved the third load out of the handcart. 

A pair of saddlebags dropped to Sam’s feet. He went to pick them up, then stopped as Faraday’s wolf lifted its muzzle towards the bags. Stared at it, and when it didn’t move any more, he flipped open the flaps. Empty.

“Teddy took—we took all the horses back to the Frankel place, for a good feed and rubdown, but he left that in the stable,” Cullen explained. “He was going to bring it over in the morning, and toss it in.”

“It’s a good set,” Sam said. Nothing remarkable—surprising, considering how Faraday liked to style the rest of himself—but it would do. 

He gave the bags back to her, and let her scoop things into it while he finished filling up the clothes and nailing the lids back down. She faltered once, when her skirts brushed by Billy’s wolf and it moved, startling her so badly she nearly tripped over the coffin. Sam grabbed her arm to steady her and then, when they’d both straightened up, they found the wolves bunched up behind him. Not doing anything in particular besides the staring.

“Do you need anything—else?” Cullen asked when she’d recovered. “For…”

“No,” Sam said. He was just guessing, but…hell, he thought. Hell.

He got the last coffin lid in place, and then, ribs and shoulders and arms aching, sat down on the nearest to catch his breath. Looked up at the sky, judging the hour, and then sighed. He had a long walk back, and was regretting not taking his horse.

“Did you mean to?” Cullen suddenly asked.

Sam squinted at her. She’d moved over to the fence again, one hand on the cross-bar as she was on her way out. Way she was angled, she wanted to look at the wolves but was trying not to. Way she was looking at him, she was…genuinely interested in the answer. 

“Mean to bring them?” he finally said. “You paid me for them, Mrs. Cullen.”

Small of him, he thought. She’d shot Bogue and ended it for him—for all of them, and she’d been paying him for that, too. He pushed himself off the coffin before he’d finished speaking, ignoring the aches, just needing to get going.

“Mr. Chisolm,” Cullen said, sharp, raw, like a whole army was going to come after him.

He turned, and she was still standing with her hand on the fence. She swallowed hard, lifted her chin. Pointed with her free hand to the saddlebags still lying on the coffin.

Sam nodded slowly at her. He picked them up, then started for the gate. She moved out of the way, and as he walked by her, he thought she was looking at him rather than the three wolves that followed him out. But he didn’t look back to check. This wasn’t something she had a claim on.

* * *

Vasquez was up by the time Sam made it back to the campsite, huddled against a rock with a bandaged arm and eyeing Red Harvest as if he was thinking of chancing the arrowhead Red Harvest was placidly tying to a shaft. When he saw Sam, he started to get up on his feet—balance was still off—and then froze, hunched over one knee, as the wolves came into view.

“Don’t shoot,” Sam said, and kept walking because he was the kind of tired that, if he stopped now, he wasn’t going to get going again for days.

Someone had packed up his horse. Good. He unhobbled it and grabbed onto the saddlehorn and more or less willed his swing up into the saddle. Once he got there, he had to sit and breathe and wait for the world to settle down again, but it did.

In the meantime, somebody was talking, and since when next he looked up, Vasquez was a good five feet closer, standing, and waving one of his guns around, he figured it’d been that man. But the first thing he heard and actually understood came from Red Harvest.

“What did you do?” the man asked, in English, staring at the closest wolf to Sam.

Sam blinked hard. “You’re asking me _after_ I get back?”

Red Harvest looked up at him. He looked different, and it took more than a second for Sam to peg why: he’d wiped off all the face-paint. “My people do not make these deals,” he said in Comanche. 

“Guess you know better,” Sam muttered. Then shook his head. He had one hell of a headache coming on, he could feel it, and…his horse twitched and he reined in, then glanced down at what’d made him move his foot: a wolf. Funny his horse wasn’t reacting much to it. Vasquez’s and Red Harvest’s mounts were throwing a fit from where they were tied up for the night. “Look, I left you the—the money. Don’t need my share, you can divide that up between yourselves. Vasquez, like I said, I’m not aiming on the money on your head either, so…believe I’m going to head up north.”

“North,” Vasquez repeated, the word practically slapping Sam’s cheek with the strength of the incredulity powering it. “What in hell is north?”

“Some business I’ve got to finish up,” Sam said. He paused, thinking whether it’d be worth thanking the two of them. Or Vasquez, at least; in the little time he’d spent riding the man, he’d noticed Vasquez had a chip as deep as the Grand Canyon where his personal honor came in. 

But then he remembered he’d done that, when they’d first ridden out of town, and hell if he was going to repeat himself. He gripped the saddlehorn, pointed his horse where he needed to go, and went.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You don't put Denzel Washington on a horse and give him a Tragic Backstory and then just let him ride off into the sunset.
> 
> I have one _Magnificent Seven_ story in me, I think, and it's been waiting years and years to get out.


	2. Vasquez

Alejandro had seen some impossible things in his day, not the least being what had happened at Rose Creek just yesterday, but Sam Chisolm riding off into the breaking dawn, three tame wolves trotting behind him…

Something about it raised the hairs on his neck and arms. He knew he wasn’t his best, and for all he knew, it was a fever coming on from the disgusting stuff Red Harvest had been pouring down his throat when he’d woken up. But it didn’t sit right with him, and it wasn’t even the wolves, or the man, or the actual _expression_ on Red Harvest’s face as he too stared after Chisolm.

“Man that tired, he could walk into a storm of bullets and not feel a thing,” Alejandro muttered. “My grandfather said he’d seen things like that at the Alamo, men who were shot and shot and did not die.”

Red Harvest pressed his lips together, and then said in very good Spanish: “He’s not dead yet.”

Then, as Alejandro blinked in bemusement, Red Harvest swiftly dismantled the remains of their campsite. The other man retrieved their horses and threw the reins of Alejandro’s over, then got onto his own. The horses both were nervous, smelling the wolves, and Alejandro nearly got dragged before Red Harvest, face settling into a more familiar stoniness, wheeled back and seized the bridle. He held it while Alejandro, thanking God for his height, heaved himself one-handed into the saddle, and then let his horse sidestep off a few paces, looking in the direction that Chisolm had gone.

“You have the gold?” Alejandro asked, feeling at his bags.

Red Harvest sighed and pointed at one of the bags. Then turned his horse around.

“Wait. Wait, wait,” Alejandro hissed. A good few hours’ rest and now he felt like shit, all the energy from the fight gone and him a man with a bullet-hole in him and the possibility of more at his back. He kicked his horse into nearly overshooting Red Harvest’s, then pulled it back so they leveled out. “What is going on? What did you let him do while I was—”

“I’m not his father,” Red Harvest said.

Alejandro had been almost certain the man knew Spanish from the way Red Harvest would lurk around him and Faraday, and had maybe thought a little French too, because of the way his head would tilt towards Robicheaux’s florid speeches. Well, now he had confirmation, and he didn’t feel like they were talking any more than they had been before. “What are those wolves?”

“Wolves,” Red Harvest said.

For a moment, Alejandro thought about shooting him.

They trailed Chisolm instead. At a distance, but Red Harvest didn’t make any attempt at cover and Chisolm wasn’t looking back. And those three wolves walking along behind him, they didn’t seem interested either. They didn’t seem real—the way they looked and moved, something was off about it, like Alejandro was looking at a zoetrope.

“Why are we doing this?” Alejandro eventually asked.

“You have money that is not all yours and you didn’t die and you have nowhere else to go,” Red Harvest said.

Alejandro’s hands tightened and that pulled at his arm. He hissed and made himself relax, and then glared at the other man. “Why are _you_ doing this? And stop—stop answering me without answering. I have eyes and I can see—”

“See what?” Red Harvest said, sharper than he’d been, and even looking at Alejandro. “What are you seeing?”

Some son of a bitch he’d fought with and would be happy to fight against if he kept that up, Alejandro almost, and did not say. His horse broke stride just at that moment, causing him to pitch in the saddle, and he had to grab the horn with both hands to steady himself. Which _hurt_. 

When he looked up again, he—didn’t see anything. Grass, rocks, tree, trail. Chisolm’s small, dark silhouette nearing the crest of the hill they were climbing, the shadows that slipped behind him. It was undisputedly day now, and promised to be a bright, sunny one. And something was setting his teeth on edge.

He looked away from Chisolm, then stiffened, his hand going back to his gun.

“No,” Red Harvest said. When Alejandro looked over, the other man shook his head. “No, it will just waste the bullet.”

Alejandro swallowed a few times, working up the spit to wet his throat and lips. “Why are there so many sha—”

“Don’t _talk_ about them,” Red Harvest hissed.

Something about the other man’s tone made Alejandro obey. And remember more of his grandfather’s stories. The old man had had a love for the terrifying tale, gathering up the children around the fire in winter and sending them to cower in their beds. The mothers hadn’t liked it, but he’d told Alejandro once, when Alejandro had been big enough to start scoffing, that he told these stories more to remind them that there was much in the world, and that they should not assume they knew what they were getting into just by what they saw.

They rode on as the sun crept higher and higher into the sky. Bogue’s men had trampled the road from one barely wide enough for a stage to one that was nearly thirty feet wide, leaving them without any cover whatsoever for hours, and still, Alejandro would see them. Shadows, small but persistent, sloping across the ground where there should be none. Whenever he looked at them directly, they disappeared.

His throat was dry. He dug a water-bottle out of his bag and took a swig, only to grimace at the taste. “The hell did you do to my water?” he snapped at Red Harvest.

“It was going to help,” Red Harvest said. He was staring at Chisolm—had been staring at the man the entire time, without a break. “You aren’t going to get a fever.”

“What do you mean?” Alejandro said. Then felt his weight shift, heard the stirrup creak—he jerked himself upright in the saddle just in time. His arm was beyond pain now, and he thought, as if watching himself from a very long distance away, that he should have stayed in town for a few days. The townsfolk probably wouldn’t have minded, and with that many dead men in the fields, nobody with a working nose was going to come visit. “What is going on, you bastard son of a b—”

“He’s going to stop soon,” Red Harvest said, straightening up. He looked at Alejandro, then pointed at Chisolm’s horse. The animal was limping, and even from this far, Alejandro could see flecks of sweat on its haunches. “He’ll have to get down.”

Something about the way the man said that made Alejandro rest one hand on his gun. “And then what?”

Red Harvest looked over at him again. Dropped eyes to the gun, then back up to Alejandro’s face. “You like wolves?”

“Is that the problem?” Alejandro said, relaxing. Wolves he’d shot. He’d spent so much time in the mountains that he figured he’d at least shot at pretty much every animal the country had to offer. Even a bear, once, although he and his horse hadn’t stayed long enough to see whether the shot had been fatal. “They going to kill him?”

“No.” Red Harvest turned and went back to staring at Chisolm, dropping over his horse’s neck so that his back and the exposed nape of his neck was to Alejandro.

He looked like a crouching cougar that way, Alejandro thought, and then—“You think _he’s_ the problem?”

“Put your gun away before you knock yourself out of the saddle. I can’t stop until he does, so I’m not going to pull you up,” Red Harvest said. One of his hands slid down against his horse’s shoulder; the other one wasn’t in Alejandro’s sight. He sounded calm but his fingers were tense where they splayed against the horse. “I don’t know if he is.”

“Then why the hell are you looking at him like that? We just fought—”

“One battle and you would die for him?” Red Harvest said, pulling himself back up. He looked at Alejandro, and despite the lack of emotion in his face, there was an intensity in his gaze that seemed—interested, not contemptuous. 

Though the interest wasn’t exactly sympathetic. More like the man was weighing up his options, and Alejandro had seen that look in the faces of enough men measuring him against his bounty to instinctively bare his teeth at it. “We fought twice. And he’s kept his word to me. You think a lot of men do that? I know they don’t.”

“He would keep his word if he was dead too.” Red Harvest watched him for a few seconds, as his fingers twitched over his gunbutt, and then shrugged. “I do not want to kill him. He speaks my language very badly, but he speaks it like a man who wishes to speak to me, and not to speak lies and tricks. But he has done something and I do not know…”

“You could just tell me what is going on,” Alejandro said. Nicely, he thought. He didn’t usually keep his temper in check like this.

“I don’t think you will believe me,” Red Harvest said after a moment. Shrugged again. “Not yet. But I am not sure anyway. He’s getting down, and the wolves are going to come to him.”

Alejandro jerked around, squinting for Chisolm, and then swore as he swayed in the saddle. He felt his weight slide and the rasp of his boot coming out of the stirrup, and then, as his face turned up towards the sun, the sky blackened.

* * *

When Alejandro woke again, his good arm was thrown over Red Harvest’s shoulders and they were walking. “I thought you weren’t going to grab me.”

“He’d stopped anyway,” Red Harvest grunted. He dragged Alejandro another yard, then tilted so that Alejandro had to take his weight on his own feet. “Our horses are not going to go downwind of the wolves. You need to go up there while I take them around.”

Staying upright took enough effort that Alejandro wasn’t able to respond for a few seconds. “Fuck your mother, you need to tell me what the hell is wrong with you before I take my boot and—fuck.”

Red Harvest had dipped out from under his arm. Alejandro turned in an awkward half-circle, then back when a moment’s glance told him the man had vanished to hell, or somewhere like it. He stumbled in place, gasping, annoyed with himself and at the same time thinking that something about this was just _wrong_ —wrong like he’d woken up all over again to his face on a bounty poster. It shouldn’t be Red Harvest here, riling him up, and he shouldn’t be standing around on this plain hillside, looking up at…

A campfire. Small and flickering against an overhang formed by an eroded spur and a couple scraggly bushes that’d taken advantage of the windbreak, with one man’s seated silhouette in front of it and two other, smaller forms. No, three.

Why _was_ he here, Alejandro asked himself. The town couldn’t be that far away, even horseless, and he had held up his end of the bargain. If he wanted to outrun his bounty, the direction for that would be south, towards his native country, and here he was, wounded, thirsty, unsure what was in front of him and what was behind. He still had his guns, and in the past, he’d always made that enough. 

Something whisked by the edge of his sight, to the left. He hissed and startled _down_ , life on the run having trained that into him, but the thing he’d seen, it was gone. Of course. He stared at the grasses anyway, breathing as little as possible, his heart drumming in his ears.

Then he got up and made himself walk to Chisolm’s camp.

It was still day, though the sun had passed the midpoint, and hot enough to make him pull open the front of his shirt. Even so, the heat of the fire made something loosen inside of him. It was like sitting around in that cabin, counting the flies on the dead man’s face and the bullets in his hand, and wondering which one was going to win out. That was what those damn shadows made him feel.

Chisolm was sitting upright, but when Alejandro got near enough, he could see the man was completely out. He’d propped himself against a bush that’d had nearly all its twigs windblast to one side, leaving the other free to lean his head again, and the shape of it had helped hide his true state. The wolves were lying around him, all with their heads turned towards him, and hadn’t stirred an inch when Alejandro had first come up. He dropped down onto the other side of the fire, gun out but lowered, and they still didn’t move.

He was tired, and at this point, with everything that had happened, he was starting to think maybe the battle had gotten to him. Maybe he _was_ dead, and lined up in a coffin along with Faraday and the others, and he’d just not realized it yet. And if he was, then a little nap wouldn’t hurt.

His eyes started to close, but then he felt the ground against his hand. His arm had bent another few inches before he caught up with himself and pushed back up, shaking his head and swearing to clear it, and—the wolves still hadn’t moved.

Alejandro sat back and looked at them. They weren’t all the same—one was black-furred, another gray mixed with brown. They were close in size, while the third was noticeably larger, with fur so red that from the back, without seeing the face, it could have passed for a dog. He lifted his gun and pointed it at the gray one, then cocked the hammer. Then uncocked it when none of them so much as swiveled an ear.

What did happen was that Chisolm woke up, going from dead asleep to holding a gun on Alejandro before Alejandro could lower his gun. And _then_ the wolves moved, just as fast as the man, turning up onto their feet and facing Alejandro.

“Vasquez?” Chisolm said blankly.

“Hola,” Alejandro said, raising his free hand.

The wolves sat back down, still staring at Alejandro. Chisolm frowned and lowered his gun, but pushed himself up onto one knee. He started to say something, then dropped it in favor of looking around.

“He’s bringing the horses,” Alejandro said, putting his gun away. He studied Chisolm for a second. “You look like shit.”

Chisolm grimaced, and rubbed a hand over his forehead. “What the hell are you doing here? Don’t you have a bounty to get away from?”

“What are you going north for?” Alejandro asked. He forced a grin he didn’t really feel, watching the way the broad scar around Chisolm’s neck flexed with each swallow. The man was never less than immaculate, and yet he hadn’t closed up the front of his shirt. “If it pays as well as the business back there, maybe I could use a share.”

“You have enough to get rid of your bounty, if you can keep it in your pocket till you get to Texas,” Chisolm said sharply. 

“Well, maybe I want a little after that. Buy a ranch, settle down, raise some cattle,” Alejandro said. “This line of business, it’s a lot of work. And not much money, if you count all the dead men it bought.”

Chisolm’s shoulders moved and Alejandro looked at the man’s hands, but they weren’t near his guns. “It’s not b—” he started, and then he shut his mouth and looked over Alejandro’s shoulder.

Red Harvest. “I am cooking,” he said. 

They both stared at him while he went about doing exactly that. Eventually, Chisolm went back to his place. But he didn’t settle, watching Red Harvest or Alejandro as if he was waiting for one of them to turn their back. The wolves, on the other hand, they went to sleep.

Aside from horses, Alejandro had not been much for animals before he’d become an outlaw, and after that, he still hadn’t thought much of them. But he had watched them, with nothing else to do, and he thought about that. Then got up, grinning at Chisolm when the man narrowed his eyes. He moved over to the nearest one to him, the big red one, and went right up to it. Sat down so close that his boot-tip nudged one paw, which yielded. 

He glanced at Chisolm, who was tight-lipped and looking away too hard, and then eased himself the rest of the way down. His arm hurt, badly, and too late he thought maybe having that one near the wolf’s head was not the best idea. But by then, he was lying down, and the bulk of the wolf was pressing against him and it wasn’t so bad, the warmth of it. He’d notice if it left. Besides, maybe he was dead, and if that was true, none of this mattered.

He fell asleep.

* * *

The wolf was still there when Alejandro woke up, well into the night. He half-rolled onto his side away from it, then grunted as a rock prodded into his hip. Something that had been there stopped and he also stopped.

Then it started again. Chisolm and Red Harvest, talking in whatever Red Harvest’s tribe spoke. They weren’t where they had been, but somewhere nearby—maybe on the other side of the rock spur. Red Harvest sounded agitated. It took a moment for Alejandro to really take that in.

When he did, he…still didn’t know what the hell was going on, but he was thirsty and his stomach was clawing at him. In the mountains he’d gotten used to that feeling, to the point that it was not so much more than a pebble in the shoe, but a couple weeks of regular meals and he’d lost all of his tolerance. Something that smelled good was on or near the fire and he half-crawled, half-dragged himself to the pot to slurp it down.

Halfway through eating, he sensed something and looked across the fire to find the small black wolf staring at him. For a second, the wolf seemed to—to actually _see_ him, as if something was inside its skull and looking back, instead of just glassy eyes pointed in his direction.

Alejandro’s arm sagged, letting the pot knock against a rock, and the wolf didn’t so much as flinch. But that _seeing_ was gone, and it was just pointed in his direction again.

Slowly, he took the pot back. He finished its contents and pushed it away, then was wiping his mouth off when Red Harvest and Chisolm came back around. “I’m going to Sacramento,” Chisolm said.

“Where Bogue lived?” Alejandro asked, and Chisolm shifted. “Did we miss some of his men?”

“What? No. No, the ones who took his money aren’t going to feel any loyalty now that it’s dried up,” Chisolm said, frowning. “He didn’t have family either. His kind never do.”

Alejandro turned that over. “Then if you go to Sacramento, nobody will care that he is dead and you are his killer?”

Chisolm was silent for a while. Behind him, Red Harvest retrieved the pot and went to the far side of the fire to do something with it.

“Mrs. Cullen shot him,” Chisolm finally said.

“And is that the story we are telling?” Alejandro said, leaning back and looking up at him.

“Not if you don’t want another bounty on your head,” Chisolm snapped. He started off a pace, tense, and then stopped and looked at something beyond the fire. “Sacramento’s big but it’s not the kind of place you’re going to blend into. You go there and—”

“You care so much about me, I am touched. Right here,” Alejandro said, and when Chisolm turned back around, he put his hand against his chest. “And—”

“And you’re tailing me because you think I’m going to watch out for you? I said I wasn’t going to come for you, I didn’t say I was going to haul that dead Ranger off your back,” Chisolm threw at him. Eyes glittering in the firelight, weight shifting in a way that made Alejandro curl his hands into fists. “If killing together made men friends, well, since the War I’ve parted ways with an awful lot of them.”

Alejandro laughed. “Maybe I just want to see if you’re dying. You looked fine right after, but then you came back with them—” he nodded at the big red one “—and now in daylight I can see—”

“See _what_ ,” Chisolm said, suddenly going still, just as Red Harvest loomed over the fire.

The wolves were on their feet too, stiff-legged, each looking in a different direction. Chisolm noticed and sucked in his breath, then took a quick step back, as if—as if he was going to break and run. The idea of it, Sam Chisolm, who even Alejandro in that godforsaken trapper cabin had heard of, just _running_ —Alejandro must have made a noise because Chisolm pressed his lips together and fell out of that stance. Not that the man looked any more comfortable.

“Where did you get them?” Alejandro finally asked. “The wolves. You went back to town. That’s what he said when I woke up, and when you came back, they were with you.”

Red Harvest looked meaningfully at Chisolm, who was ignoring him. “I don’t think they’re wolves,” Chisolm muttered. “They don’t act right.”

“They don’t remember,” Red Harvest snapped at him in English. “ _That_ is not right. If you are going to—”

“I didn’t think that would happen!” Chisolm snapped back, turning towards him. “I didn’t want that! I was just—”

Then he seemed to remember Alejandro. He shut up again and Alejandro sighed, looking at Red Harvest, but the man was turning away and muttering unintelligibly to himself. “Even Faraday made more sense than this,” Alejandro couldn’t help saying. “And _guero_ rode right into the guns.”

The big red wolf twisted around, then took a step towards Alejandro. It had to brush up against Chisolm to do it and Chisolm glanced down, then seemed about to spit something out when the wolf abruptly turned back and sat down, staring at him. Chisolm’s face twisted, angry and bitter, and then he looked back up at Alejandro.

“I’m going to Sacramento,” he said, calmly. “I owe a debt. Thought it’d gotten paid off, but it’s not, and—Sacramento’s where I’m going to do that. You don’t need to come. You, me, we don’t owe anything to each other.”

“Didn’t say we did,” Alejandro said, just as calmly. 

Chisolm watched him the way one would watch another gunfighter, waiting for the break and then the hand going for the gun. He didn’t stop when Alejandro put both his palms on the ground, fingers spread, and leaned back on them. On the other side of the fire, Red Harvest was watching them both, hunched slightly forward on one leg as if to leap the flames.

“All right,” Chisolm said. He took a step back, still facing Alejandro. Then another, and with this one, he turned a little from Alejandro.

“ _Guero_ ,” Alejandro said.

Chisolm turned back, but by then the big red wolf had lifted its head.

“ _Guero_ , I took your guns and gave your horse away,” Alejandro said. “I am not sorry. The guns were worth more.”

The wolf’s head jerked, then again. It dipped and a paw came up at the same time, almost as if—it felt human, that move, reaching for its head.

“Goddamn it, Vasquez,” Chisolm exploded, hand going down to his hip.

Then he spun around. Red Harvest fell back too, somehow avoiding falling into the fire as he threw himself away from the thing that’d burst between the two men: the gray wolf, lips pulled back from its teeth as it backed up against Chisolm.

A second later, the black wolf was shouldered in besides the gray one, though its teeth weren’t bared. The red wolf was slowest to join, a faintly puzzled air around it. 

“See? They come to _you_ ,” Red Harvest hissed. “You need to make them remember. You leave them like this and you are just like the one who made this—this—”

There wasn’t a word for it in English, apparently, since Red Harvest then burst into a long string of his language. Chisolm could still follow it, and didn’t like it; he was showing more teeth than any of the wolves, who despite putting up a wall of their bodies for him seemed just as unthinking about that as anything else.

“I didn’t do this!” Chisolm shouted at Red Harvest. “I thought—it was so I would be done! I thought _I’d_ die!”

That was…not what Red Harvest had been expecting. He fell back, eyes wide enough that the firelight caught on their whites.

Chisolm hadn’t been expecting that to come out either, said the look on his face. He breathed heavily, bent over a little, one hand on the front of his thigh. His eyes closed, then opened. “I mean,” he muttered, and had to catch his breath. “Life for a life, eye for an eye. I stayed for Bogue—I stayed, and now he’s dead, and…I only ever asked for that much. I wasn’t going to keep more than I’d asked for.”

Red Harvest nodded once, then dropped into a squat. He rubbed at the side of his face, the first time Alejandro could remember seeing him show fatigue. Then the wolves shook out of their circle, lying down one by one. The red one glanced at Alejandro, but when he moved, it closed his eyes and put its head down, and didn’t stir as Chisolm also took a seat.

“Still going to Sacramento?” Alejandro asked.

“What?” Chisolm said, and sharply enough that for a moment, Alejandro thought it was all going to start up again. Then he grimaced, and put his face in his hand. He kept it there for long enough that Alejandro thought he might have passed out again, then sighed. “Yeah. It’s—whatever this is, it’s the only place I know to start looking about what—what happened.”

Then Chisolm paused. He didn’t look up, but Red Harvest moved his shoulders anyway. “No. We do not make these deals, I told you. There is a—even their kind will kill them.”

“What kind?” Alejandro asked.

Red Harvest looked at him, then said something, not in English or Spanish.

“I will shoot you, with Faraday’s gun,” Alejandro said.

“Stop it,” Chisolm said. He pulled his head out of his hand. “Look, it’s been a long—tomorrow. If you’re going to be around.”

He sounded like he didn’t care whether Alejandro was or not, which Alejandro supposed was an improvement. “I have nothing else to do,” Alejandro said.

Chisolm looked over at him. Alejandro shrugged and the lines of Chisolm’s face went hard and cold. But the man just turned away, taking up his place by the bush, and eventually they all just settled in for the night. Maybe it was strange, that Alejandro felt nothing more than that, but then, what could happen to him? He could die?

He had nothing else to do, he reminded himself, and fell back asleep, the red wolf’s back the last thing he saw.

* * *

In the morning, Chisolm explained. “After the War, when they’d freed everybody, I went back South and found my mother and three sisters, and picked up some land from the Army. Was going to be a farmer, if you can believe that.”

Alejandro shrugged. They were riding again, heading a little west of the real trail now that they were getting close enough to other towns to worry about people seeing him and the wolves. His arm still hurt, the wolves still stared, and he kept seeing things out of the corner of his eye that weren’t really there. All in all, he thought, he still wasn’t sure whether what he believed had anything to do with any of it. “I was going to be a musician.”

Chisolm was quiet for a moment. Then he shook his head. “Our place was a little farther out of town than some. By the time Bogue’s men got to it, they were done working and wanted to have some fun.”

“So they hung you up?” Alejandro said, nodding at Chisolm’s neck. Now the man had his shirt buttoned up, but that didn’t stop the gray wolf from lifting its head towards them.

Alejandro’s horse shied violently, and Red Harvest had to come over and help Chisolm walk it between their horses till it calmed down. They’d tried it, when they’d first woken up: walking the horses up to the wolves. As long as the wolves weren’t directly in sight, the horses didn’t seem to mind. It was like they didn’t know they were there. But sometimes Alejandro or Chisolm would say something, and the wolves would— _look_ , and then the horses would notice.

It happened when the horses couldn’t see them, even. It was…interesting. Red Harvest got very intent whenever it happened, too. _He_ hadn’t said much, except to agree they should go further north. He did not say Sacramento, Alejandro had noticed.

“Yeah.” Chisolm worked his jaw. 

“You died?” Alejandro prompted, after a few minutes had passed.

Chisolm looked at him, and Red Harvest rode up just as the gray one’s head surfaced above the grass again. This time, Chisolm barely helped with Alejandro’s horse, keeping his hands on his own reins. He did look at the gray wolf and for a second, Alejandro thought his expression was different. Not softer, but…showing something. Maybe grief. Maybe not.

Finally Chisolm shrugged. “Something happened. I was hanging long enough, I know that.” His teeth clicked, and for a second Alejandro didn’t think he was going to continue. “I talked to someone. A man. He said, life for a life, and I said, as long as I live to see Bogue dead at my feet. And then I got up.”

Then they both looked over at Red Harvest, but while the man was riding nearly onto the back hooves of Alejandro’s horse, he wasn’t saying anything. Alejandro turned around first, but Chisolm kept up the staring match for a while longer.

“Up ahead,” Chisolm said, and when he had Alejandro’s attention, he nodded at the hazy dot on the horizon. “Empty the last time I passed through, just a month or so back. The railroad went the other way, so good chance it still is.”

Alejandro squinted at the house, then dug his nails into the saddle as something—on the right. The black wolf started to cut in like it saw it, then slowed as Alejandro’s horse neighed sharply. Or maybe it was the way Alejandro had grabbed the cigarillo out of his mouth before he swallowed it down by accident. He stared at the wolf, letting Chisolm deal with his horse, and then wiggled the smoking butt. He thought its eyes tracked it for a moment before it dropped back.

“Why the hell in the day,” Alejandro muttered to himself in Spanish. “Didn’t bother me so much at night.”

“At night they’re closer,” Red Harvest replied in Spanish, unhelpfully. He did nod to the wolves, which did not give Alejandro much more.

“You see something like this?” Chisolm broke in. In English, but he’d been following, Alejandro was sure. “When you were running out of Texas? Or back in Mexico?”

“Mexico, when you see a wolf, you shoot it,” Alejandro snorted. He tugged his reins out of Chisolm’s hand and then shrugged, when he saw how the other man was looking for him. “But I am not going to pretend I don’t see what is happening in front of my own eyes. And this is interesting.”

“Interesting,” Chisolm said, his voice rising at the end. He shifted in the saddle like he wanted to make something of it.

Alejandro hissed at him, then nodded to where the gray wolf had disappeared back into the grass. “Spare my horse, your wolves are scaring him and he has worked very hard, these last few days.”

Chisolm thought _Alejandro_ was ‘interesting,’ uncomfortably close to the way bounty hunters did, and for a moment Alejandro thought—it was a shame about Faraday, and Robicheaux. They’d both irritated the hell out of him but they had _talked_ , talked whenever they’d seen something, and this was what got on Alejandro’s nerves the most about his current company. Not the things he saw-didn’t-see, not the questions he had, but the way Chisolm and Red Harvest kept shutting up on him. Fine, they couldn’t talk about the shadows, but there was plenty else, he thought. 

They rode up to the house, which was a long, low ranch-house, roomy enough that whoever had once lived here must have had the money to import the wood, but otherwise stripped to just the walls and the roof. The building seemed sound enough and had no signs of life, so they stabled the horses and cleared out what used to be the kitchen to use. Then Chisolm said he needed to ride into the next town to send a telegram.

“What about them?” Alejandro said, pointing to the nearest wolf.

Chisolm’s brow furrowed. “Hell, I don’t—it’ll be dark by the time I get to the town line. You’re a hell of a lot bigger than them, it’s not like you coming is going to get noticed any less.”

Alejandro raised his hands palms-out and Chisolm looked more annoyed, then turned abruptly and walked to his horse. Halfway there, he stopped and turned around, and they both looked at the wolves, which hadn’t left the pile of bags in the kitchen.

Chisolm sucked in a long, low breath, and for a second Alejandro thought he looked hopeful. Then he got on his horse and turned its head around without another word.

“Huh,” Alejandro said, watching him ride away. Then looked at the wolves. “But you know, I think he is coming back. He does not like to not be there when something happens.”

The wolves didn’t answer. Neither did Red Harvest, who when Alejandro looked had also disappeared. Alejandro stood there, in the wide-open doorway of the house, with the broad sweep of plains ahead of him, and something cold licked at the back of his neck.

He twisted sharply, then cursed and grabbed at whatever had tripped him: the red wolf. He stopped, one hand buried in the ruff around its neck, but its eyes had that blank sheen on it. Suddenly angry, Alejandro pushed the wolf away and ended up with his back pressed against the wall.

The wolf hunched where he’d left it, legs bent awkwardly. The other two were still lying where they’d dropped when…yes, when Chisolm had dropped the bags. 

Alejandro put his hand against his mouth, thinking, and then pushed himself off the wall. Closed the door and braced it, got a fire going in the fireplace, put a kettle on to heat. Checked the windows and the other door. Checked his bandaged arm. Checked his guns. If he did that with more noise than he needed to, well, the wolves did not mind, and the creak and rattle of seasoned wood as the fire started to heat up the room made it almost sound like a conversation.

He ate and drank some coffee, and then, making up his mind, started digging through Chisolm’s gear. It took him less than a minute to find what he thought he’d find.

“Huh,” he said again, holding up one of Billy’s knives.

Then he looked over. The black wolf had raised its head but was still sitting on the other side of the room. Alejandro frowned, then looked down at the knife. Somebody hadn’t cleaned it well, with a crust of dried blood starting about an inch from the handle, and the blade was bent at the tip.

“Well, since you have no hands,” Alejandro said, getting up. He poured some of his leftover coffee over it, not wanting to go back outside for water, and then scrubbed it against the dirt. “I have only the one, really, but we will see.”

The blood came off easily enough, but the blade…he hunted around and found a loose piece of wood, which he used to pin the blade against the side of the fireplace. It wasn’t a blacksmith’s anvil, but he got the thing more or less straight. Then held it up for the wolf to see. 

It stung when the wolf didn’t react, more than Alejandro had been expecting. He—just two weeks, he thought bitterly to himself. He’d drawn on men he’d known for more than twice, ten times as long. And this…biting back a curse, he irritably lobbed the knife at the wall.

The handle hit first and then it bounced to the ground. Alejandro sat back, sighing, and then realized all three wolves were on their feet. The black one was staring at the knife, while the gray one was staring at the black one. And the red one was looking at Alejandro.

Alejandro thought about it, then got up and picked up the knife. He went back to where he’d been, then threw the knife again, aiming this time. The point stuck, for a second, and then the weight of it swung down and pulled it out of the wood.

“Knives are for your food,” Alejandro said, watching the way the wolves’ ears were twitching. “My mother, God rest her soul, she tried to raise me a—oh, yes, you are even less civilized than me.”

He repeated it in English and couldn’t help a snort when the red _and_ the gray one looked at him. Getting back up, he got that bag of Chisolm’s and turned out all of its contents to see what he could find.

Cards. Of course. He picked up the ones that had spilled out of the bandanna wrapped around them, then fanned them out. The red wolf actually came over, nosing at them, and Alejandro started to laugh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Six Years with the Texas Rangers 1875-1881_ by James B. Gillett (an actual Ranger’s memoir) is a research goldmine. It’s also a really tough read due to the pervasive racism and bigotry, which is just plain straightforward...that. No shades of gray or even complex psychological hypocrisy like with, say, Lovecraft.


	3. Chisholm

Sam nearly got shot coming up to town, just riding up to the back of what looked like a stable and looking, in the words of the aging stablehand who’d been spotting him with a shotgun, like he’d rolled off the cattle drive and into hell. That hadn’t happened to him in a while; he knew the kind of picture he presented, well-heeled black man, and it intentionally got up white men’s backs up. If they were looking to teach him a lesson about his place, that usually meant they were going to come over and do it, as opposed to sniping him from inside a building.

 _Refuge in audacity_ , Goodnight had told him once, at the beginning of a very longwinded story about some fancy politician from ancient Rome. Back then, Goodnight had had the shakes too, but he’d talk himself to sleep, and he seemed to get enough that his shooting wasn’t impaired.

Goodnight. “Shit,” Sam muttered into the water he was spooning over his face. He let it dribble away into the barrel he was leaning over, then put his hands on the rim and braced himself, looking up into the cracked mirror hanging against the post. “Shit, shit, and double down shit up the creek.”

“You all right, son?” called the stablehand.

Sam waved his hand as an answer. He got the feeling that the man didn’t believe him, but when the stablehand had turned to lead Sam’s horse into the barn, the back of his shirt had dropped low enough to show whip-scars. That and his skin being even darker than Sam’s own and his age, and the fact that he’d made it out to California, said he was old enough to know when to not look at other men’s business.

Speaking of which…Sam had to settle this. He knew that, looking at the haggard, ashen face that looked back at him in the mirror. He didn’t need Red Harvest chattering at him the whole night to tell him that—and hell, did he take back ever wishing the man would speak up—he knew when he needed to pay somebody. Those three men hadn’t asked him for a thing, except a shot at something before they’d died. And hell, it hadn’t been pretty, the way that they had went, but he’d gotten a glance at Goodnight, in between all of the gunfire and the smoke, and the way that the man’s face had shone, the way he’d swung his rifle like it was just another arm of his…

Maybe, Sam thought, if he’d waited, they would’ve spoken to him like Horne had. Calm and restful, done with this world and all of its ruins. He’d just thought—four of them. All of them could have died, but just four of them.

He pushed himself back from the barrel, looked at himself again, and then made an effort to tidy himself. There was only so much some water and a brushing could do, but he borrowed an old coat off the stablehand and kept to the backs of the houses, and did his best.

He wasn’t headed for the telegraph office like he’d said, but for the smaller, flimsier houses at the side of town the blacks lived in. This was close enough to the railroad that turnover was brisk and a lot of the faces he didn’t know, but a few of the men had heard of him—not from another law officer or a newspaper—and eventually they were able to direct him to the house of the current preacher.

“They made us move them, I’m sorry to say,” the man told him over two cups of steaming coffee on the porch of the church. “The old road washed out last year, and they had to move the corrals so that everything was shifted east about two houses. The new Wells Fargo warehouse, its back ends right about the middle of it. I wouldn’t have thought men could stand to work over a place like that.”

Sam sighed. “Wells Fargo doesn’t believe there’s any God but themselves, in my experience,” he said. 

“Indeed, Mr. Chisolm, indeed,” the preacher said. Halfway through his eyes wandered away and he stiffened. Frowned at something, lowering his coffee, and then jumped a little when Sam cleared his throat. “If you’re going to ask whether we had time to dig up the bodies, yes, they did give us that much grace. But it was one day and one night, and I am ashamed to admit wasn’t much care taken to keep things orderly.”

“But you got them all,” Sam said. “You got them out and buried them again somewhere.”

The preacher started to answer, then looked away again. Longer this time, his eyes going up and then sideways before returning to Sam. He started to ask something and Sam looked back at the question rising in the man’s throat, looked at it and asked without asking whether it was that important, whatever the man was wondering.

Last time Sam had been here, the preacher had been an old, white-haired, bent-backed man. Good at comforting the women and children and not so much of an elder that he couldn’t surprise the young cowboys with a snapped retort. This one, though, he wasn’t much older than Sam, and when he raised one hand to push up his hat, he showed a long pale crease across the side of his scalp.

“Mr. Chisolm, this may be forward of me, but can I ask what your business is?” the preacher said. “The man’s dead, so he can’t be returned for a bounty, and I don’t believe he was a relation of yours. I heard about your family.”

Sam stared at him, and the preacher lowered his hand, leaving his hat off-center, and stared back. 

“No offense,” he said after a moment, quietly. “But it’s darker under here than it should be, and even though I’ve got the sun right on my shoulders, there’s a chill crawling up my back. I hear you’re a good man, Mr. Chisolm, and even if you weren’t, in the house of God we are all equal—”

“It hasn’t been my house since—” Sam started, tired, and then he caught himself. He grimaced and dipped his head, looking at the slats between his feet. One was still white and fresh, its nails winking in the sunlight.

When he looked up, the preacher was studying his face. Not with horror, or fear, or even with pity—things Sam all thought would have been easy to reply to—but with something Sam hated and yet felt himself unbending under at the same time.

“I wasn’t done when the War was,” the preacher said, abruptly looking away. He reached up again and took his hat off, showing the scar across his head. “Those battlefields, they were full of demons, and I was more than happy to fill my ears up with their words, even if it meant I was taking lives at white men’s orders. They told me to go West with the Army, and so I did. I rode with the 10th and I killed and I killed until one day, I turned around and looked at the graves behind me, and I thought: enough.”

“I knew the 10th. Didn’t join—went to Kansas, to farm,” Sam said. He looked up and out over the porch, but saw nothing. He’d _seen_ nothing, he thought, since Horne. But that cold up the back, he knew what the man meant. “Listen, I’m not going to do anything—anything to hurt the people here. It’s just I have unfinished—I have something that should be his. We rode together for a while, till he got shot taking in a cattle thief, and I had to leave the next day so we had the funeral two hours later and I forgot I had something of his.”

“You did,” the preacher said. When Sam looked back at him, the man was still looking him over with that same measuring gaze. Weighing up this and that, and then finally, making up his mind. “I wasn’t here myself for the reburying, but some of the men who helped with that are still in town. Come back after service on Sunday and I’ll have them up here, and we’ll see what we can remember.”

“Thank you,” Sam said. He tipped his head a few inches off his head, then turned to go.

“You’re free to come before service too, and join,” the preacher had to add.

Sam should just shake his head and keep walking. It was what he’d always done before. But—he held himself back, looking over the alley behind the church. The fence of the next building over overlapped with the plot, so there was a short zigzag out to the new graveyard. Wasn’t much, just wooden boards here and there, but he could see someone weeded it regularly, and the fence around it was standing straight.

“I haven’t had anything to do with God since my family died,” Sam finally said.

“You don’t come to hear _him_ ,” the preacher said, exasperated, and that was enough to make Sam turn around. “You think I hear him? If I had, I wouldn’t have taken up preaching, Mr. Chisolm. Wouldn’t have the time for it.”

“Well, then who do you listen to, these days?” Sam asked, more out of morbid curiosity than anything else. 

“My flock. My people.” The preacher stretched an arm out, encompassing the whole neighborhood. “Their voices, whether they’re in the church or not. When you turn from the demon, Mr. Chisolm, that is by God’s grace but when you choose to _live_ with them, yet not follow their call—this is what we all do, and nobody knows that better than the man next to you.”

Sam opened his mouth, then shut it. He wasn’t going to disrespect another veteran, much less one who’d re-enlisted. He just didn’t think the man saw.

“I’ll come around Sunday,” he said, with a last nod.

* * *

Vasquez had been amusing himself back at the abandoned ranch, so much so that he didn’t even look guilty to be caught with another man’s empty saddlebag. “Look, look,” he said, shuffling around as Sam tried to carry in a cord of wood. “I think he remembers this.”

He squatted down in front of the smallest wolf, dagger in hand, and proceeded to twirl it as if it was one of his guns. The wolf did follow the movements, muzzle bobbing up and down as the knife moved. Then Vasquez fumbled it and the dagger flipped away from him and towards the wolf. He reached after it, cursing, and then snatched his hand back with a hiss.

Sam twisted around, hand on his gun, but it wasn’t the wolf, who was sniffing at the fallen dagger. The sheath had come half-off with all the twirling and Vasquez had cut himself. “You’re already down an arm.”

“Eh, it’s just stiff now,” Vasquez said, though when he shrugged, one shoulder moved much more than the other. He put his hand to his mouth and briefly sucked his fingers, then moved back. “And _guero_ here, watch.”

“I don’t—” Sam started.

Ignoring him, Vasquez stretched out towards the small heap of things in the corner and hooked over a gunbelt. He crooked his finger at the big red wolf, grinning even though it wasn’t looking at him, and then slipped it around the trigger of one gun. The wolf did start to look over as he pulled it out and when Vasquez saw that, he laughed.

It was too big of a sound for the room, cramped as it was with two men and three large animals. Sam dropped the wood by the fireplace and wished, meanly, that the clatter was louder.

“ _Guero_ ,” Vasquez crooned, petting the gun handle. 

The wolf stiffened its forelegs, humped up its back. Something was in its eyes besides that dull stare, but Sam didn’t like it any better. “You want to get yourself killed, do it outside,” Sam muttered. “I never took up having a dead man as a roommate, and I’m not going to now.”

Vasquez raised his head, frowning. The wolf was starting to bare its teeth and the idiot wasn’t seeing it because—Sam stalked over and yanked the gunbelt out of Vasquez’s hands, then tossed it back with the other things. Then turned around and nearly stepped on the gray wolf, which had come up right behind him. It danced a little, backing up, blinking at him. He snarled at it without thinking—didn’t even go for his gun—and it dropped its head and sidled out of his way.

Sam went outside. He’d get some water, and not think about it, he figured.

“I think you are changing it,” Vasquez said, following him, because the man would not leave. “They were calmer when you were in town. _Guero_ and me, we even had a siesta together.”

“You keep calling it that and I’m going to start to wonder,” Sam said.

The skritch of a match almost made him look over, but he managed not to. “Calling him what?” Vasquez said. “ _Guero_?”

Sam looked skywards. Back in Rose Creek, when Vasquez and Faraday had gone at each other, Goodnight had leaned over one night in the saloon and said—

And suddenly Sam didn’t want to remember, and yet he did, because he missed the man. Fiercely, with an ache that he knew he’d been putting off since he’d swallowed his pride and let Goodnight walk out of town without so much as a hurled curse at the back. It hadn’t been anything to ask the man to stay, but then watching him go, like Lincoln hadn’t even happened and Goodnight had _damn_ well knew it. Known it almost as well as Sam, the only one besides four bodies in Kansas dirt—hell.

Hell, he thought.

“… _three_ of them. Three of them, and one watches the knives and one the cards and the last one, he’s always first up when you are up,” Vasquez was saying, low, each word pushing the other like a fully-loaded freight train. It was like if he stopped, he thought the train would stop. “So what you think I can think, when I see this myself, I—”

“Why the hell are you so happy about this?” Sam asked. He paused, then took a deep breath. “You went into the church a few times, bowed your head. I saw you.”

“It’s a church. You show it some respect. I may have my face on some posters, but I remember how my mother raised me,” Vasquez said. He was a little irritated, but mostly curious. “What? Am I supposed to throw my arms up and say, you are a devil, you brought them back?”

Sam rubbed at the side of his face, then turned and looked at the other man. Vasquez raised his brows back, then pulled his cigarillo out of his mouth. 

“We fought well. We fought like—like demons,” Vasquez said, and for a second wonder whisked through his voice. “They brought, what did Robicheauz call it, they brought the Devil’s Wrath, but we outfought it. I thought it was a shame, that we did not all live, and now you are mad that I am happy this is not true?”

“How do you know that?” Sam said, then shook his head. “Don’t show me any more tricks. You don’t even know what devil you’re playing with.”

“Is that what you and Red Harvest are always talking about?” Vasquez asked.

Where was he anyway, Sam wondered. When Sam had first headed in, he’d had the impression Red Harvest was trailing him, but he’d lost that feeling as soon as he’d entered town. The man hadn’t shown back up, and it was getting late.

Maybe he’d lost that one. “They died,” Sam said flatly. “When you die, you die.”

“Well, I don’t know, maybe this is something you should talk about with them,” Vasquez said, with a meaningful glance inside. Then he stopped, still half-turned, and narrowed his eyes. “Or is that the idea?”

“I don’t even know what you’re…why does it matter to you, anyway?” Sam asked. “You that hard-up for company, after killing a Ranger?”

“You found me living with a dead man,” Vasquez said, voice mild, though he was looking hard enough at Sam to make up for it. He put his cigarillo to his mouth and dragged hard on it, then stubbed it out against the doorway. “I killed that Ranger. He should have left things to us—we knew the man, we knew what he’d done, it would have been handled. But he has to come, because it’s not enough that you avenge the Alamo, you must make all the children and the grandchildren remember too, and he must be a _Texas_ Ranger and I killed him. This I live with. But I am a man, and if I can? I live. So why do you not want to?”

“I didn’t say I didn’t,” Sam said, after a long time. “I just said…it should’ve been my time. Bogue’s dead and I shouldn’t have had any longer than that. And if I am, I’m not—I don’t think that that’s as it s—”

They both turned at the same time. Then, hissing, Vasquez struck another match and held it above his face as the dim flame filtered into the growing darkness.

“That,” Sam said after a second, reaching behind him. He felt for the doorway, then pulled himself inside and grabbed Vasquez by the shoulder. “I don’t think that should have come back. I don’t think that’s right.”

Vasquez turned and looked at him as he pulled the other man into the room. Then hissed again, shaking his fingers. He dropped the expired match and sucked at his fingertips while Sam shut and barred the door.

“What if Red—” he started.

“He can knock,” Sam said. “Or say something. I don’t think they can do that. Either.”

“What are _they_?” Vasquez demanded. His eyes were glittering, and Sam knew it: one wrong word and it’d be hands around each other’s throats.

A low, deep sound rolled around the room. It got into Sam’s bones, had him making a fist before he realized, and he had to bite the inside of his mouth to get it to open for a breath. He exhaled, careful, and then looked at the wolves ringed around Vasquez’s back.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m looking into it. Settle down.”

The wolves stayed up a moment longer, then retreated as Vasquez turned around. The man looked…hurt, Sam thought. Then confused, and then considering. 

“I don’t think they like that out there any more than I do,” Vasquez said.

“I don’t have any idea,” Sam said, truthfully, and then he went to build up the fire. They had the wood; more water would have been nice, but they could make do, especially if Red Harvest was spending the night away from them. “Look, it’s not Sacramento I’m going to, I just said that because…anyway, this is far enough. I knew a man who lived here—I’m trying to find him. Some people I asked in town, they said come back Sunday.”

“Sunday?” Vasquez stood and Sam could see the man’s lips move as he worked out the calendar. “Oh.”

That seemed to settle him. He went back to toying with the wolves while Sam put together a meal, and then they set up in separate corners for the night.

* * *

Sam and Vasquez didn’t speak much for the next few days. Vasquez seemed happy to busy himself with trying to make friends with the wolves, while Sam made a few more trips back and forth between town. He told himself they were for supplies, and the things he bought were needed, but he could have made fewer trips.

He did time it so Vasquez wasn’t alone in the cabin between dusk and daybreak, and on the second day, Red Harvest turned up to join him on the ride back. The man took up one corner, watching as Vasquez played solitaire in front of the bemused-looking big red wolf, and then rode out with Sam in the morning.

“They _do_ remember,” Red Harvest said the second they were out of Vasquez’s earshot. “You can see that in their eyes. When you first came back with them, there was nothing in them. Nothing. I thought, maybe, that you had only the bodies without the spirits. But you look now and you can see them coming back.”

“Right,” Sam said, when the other man kept looking at him.

Red Harvest exhaled explosively, then let loose a torrent of Comanche that Sam couldn’t keep up with. From what he could gather, the man had gone to consult somebody, but the fighting with the U.S. Army had dragged away everyone towards the south, so that he hadn’t been able to before he’d felt he had to turn back. He’d been worried if he left Sam for too long, something—

“Did you just want to kill me?” Sam interrupted. “You know, if I’m what you’re thinking I am?”

As suddenly as he’d started talking, Red Harvest stopped. He sat back in the saddle, looking at Sam through narrowed eyes. The muscle in his jaw was twitching—without the paint it was easier to see that kind of thing.

“I don’t know if you are—I don’t know what you are. This is not exactly how they tell of it happening,” Red Harvest finally muttered.

“What happening?” Sam asked, genuinely curious.

Red Harvest didn’t answer him. Instead he looked off to the side. When he saw something, he tensed till his shoulderblades seemed about to burst from his skin. Sam looked, as he always did, and didn’t see anything, as usual. But—

“Do not listen to them,” Red Harvest said.

Sam started. Hard enough to unsettle his horse, and he had to spend a good couple minutes getting it back under control. He would’ve expected Red Harvest to have moved onto another rant by then, but instead the other man pressed his lips together and waited for him.

“I think I can hear them, a little. When you’re staring like that.” Red Harvest was looking straight ahead, that jumpy muscle in his jaw now joined by the muscles in his throat slowly pushing up against the skin. “Vasquez can see them, where they’ve been.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sam said, and for a second, he thought Red Harvest was going to push him off his horse. For a second, maybe he thought about letting the other man. Then he grimaced and raised his hand. “I’m staring like _what_?”

Red Harvest glanced at him, then took another, longer look. “You stare like this is not the world you are looking at.” Then, before Sam could speak. “Do not call them by name, it gives them power.”

“Well, then what am I supposed to do?” Sam snapped. “Ride around letting them talk me into—into something? I’m not going back to Kansas, I know—”

He shut his mouth. But the sounds washed over him anyway, the ones he’d been trying not to hear ever since Horne had faded away. Crackling, popping wood, and the low creak of hemp rope, and the wet rasp of breath through a crushed ribcage. Talk about remembering, _he_ remembered, he’d remembered back in the church with his hands on Bogue’s throat and he’d thought, if he had to listen, if he had to, then that man would listen with—

“The hell?” Sam said. He became aware of his horse fussing again, and tugged at the reins. Then wiped at whatever Red Harvest had thrown in his face. It smelled a little—not bad, but of herbs.

“It’s the best I can do,” Red Harvest said tensely. Disappointed in something, and he wasn’t looking at Sam. “My elders are dead or south fighting the Army. I wanted to fight too, but they heard the wolves howling and they sent me west, in case it was the maneaters again. I was not done learning all they knew, and now I think I will not finish.”

“I’m sorry,” Sam said, because he knew about leaving before you were ready. 

They rode on towards town. When they got near enough to see the corrals outside and hear people working them, Red Harvest began to drop back. “Don’t listen to them,” he said. “You should talk to those who know you instead.”

“Well, that’s you and Vasquez at this point,” Sam said. Or started to say, because then the other man was gone. Sam looked around, annoyed, but all he saw was the town, and then the road behind him. And it was all, he thought in relief, that he could hear, too.

* * *

“Something happen?” Vasquez asked when Sam got back that night. Red Harvest had arrived ahead of him, and was down at the ranch’s well, pulling up water, while Vasquez was pulling himself up from what appeared to be a staring match with the gray wolf. “They got worked up this morning, maybe an hour after you left.”

“What?” Sam said.

Vasquez pointed at the wolves. “Them. _Guero_ almost set his tail on fire, while Bil—”

“Can you stop that?” Sam snapped, and went back outside to help Red Harvest.

When he came back in, Vasquez had apparently dropped it and was in the corner with the black one and the red one, talking to both in Spanish. Every once in a while he’d stop and study their faces. Most of the time, he didn’t seem to get what he was looking for, but once the red one got up and shifted his haunches and sat back down, and this made Vasquez so elated he reached out and ruffled the wolf’s ears. The wolf allowed it, in the same dazed way that it seemed to do everything.

Living up in the mountains might have done something. Sam had seen that before, taking in outlaws who’d been out of society for too long. He hadn’t thought so with Vasquez, but the time before the second Rose Creek fight had maybe not been long enough to let it show. And besides, they’d had others with them, so maybe Sam just hadn’t gotten to see enough of the man.

He left Vasquez to it, barricading the door instead, and settled in for another night of trying to not hear anything.

* * *

Blue eyes were boring into Sam’s face, and he knew that look. “Roll over, G’night,” he mumbled, still sleep-hazed. “Nothing here but us living men, you know that.”

The wolf looked at him for a little longer, then sat down next to him. It was quieter, he thought, and closed his eyes again.

* * *

Saturday he rode in, aiming to go to the black neighborhood and see if he could get wind of anything untoward before his meeting with the preacher. He didn’t take the preacher for a man who went back on his word, but he’d been hunting men for too long to take any kind of meeting for granted. And he did have a reputation, and it wasn’t just white men who liked to try their luck at times.

Red Harvest joined him, ready for another talk. “Why are you looking up a man who died over two years ago?”

Sam started to ask how the man knew, then decided it didn’t matter. It also didn’t matter about keeping it from Red Harvest; if he knew what Sam was talking about, maybe he’d stop nagging, and if he didn’t, then maybe he’d also stop talking and go looking for another elder of his. Either way, he’d leave Sam be and Sam only needed one more day. “I think it has to do with four. He told me four, four I lost and four I’d lose again, but Horne.”

He stopped then, not quite sure how much to say. Some of the tribes could take seeing the dead a little funny, and anyway, he…didn’t feel right talking about that part, to be honest. It had been _quiet_ when he’d been looking at Horne’s ghost, something he’d only gradually realized afterward, with all of the whispers chasing him.

“You didn’t bring him back.” Red Harvest clicked at his horse, then smoothed one hand over its neck. “He didn’t want to come back.”

“Didn’t seem like it. If a man’s dead, you should respect that,” Sam said.

That made the other man look up sharply at him. Maybe he’d said it too flippantly, though he meant it, and he’d think Red Harvest would know that by now.

“I rode with Clayton for nearly a year. He was a good man,” Sam said after a moment. He pursed his lips. “When I heard Bogue was moving operations into the area, he came with me to look into it. Wasn’t the right time—too much else going on, with the Lincoln County War and the Apache getting restless. We had our hands full just keeping the peace, and then he got shot covering me.”

“So you think—” Red Harvest started, and then he twisted around as someone hailed them.

One rider, coming out from town. He walked his horse past the corrals, then took his hat off, though even before that, Sam had clocked the paleness of his skin compared to the cowboys working the cattle. “Sam Chisolm,” said Chris Argent. He paused. “It is you, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Sam said, managing a smile. He wasn’t minded to be social, but Argent had been a decent partner for a few warrants. Single-minded about killing his father, but having heard what the man had done up near Mount Shasta, Sam had understood that. “You’re not looking to collect on me or my friend here, are you?”

Chris raised his brows. Looked Red Harvest full in the face without sneering, just interest. “You been doing something I should be collecting on?”

“Well, I don’t think so, no,” Sam said, as Red settled back on his horse, a gun and at least two knives within reach from where Sam was sitting. “Unless you’ve been talking to anyone who’s friendly with Bart Bogue.”

“I heard about that, the mine shutting down,” Chris said, with a shrug to say mining wasn’t his interest. His family had been in the fur trade, Sam thought the man had said once. He leaned back and looked Sam over. He seemed…steadier, less like someone looking to plunge after his bullets before he’d seen whether they’d done the job. “Also heard you’ve been looking for graves.”

Sam stiffened. “Did you.”

“Look, don’t blame the good father,” Chris said with a sigh, holding up his hand. He paused, then edged his horse up to where they could talk without raising their voices. “I heard about it from some of the men at the stables and I think he told you he was going to ask them.”

“Well, he did, as a matter of fact.” Sam tried to ease back, look less agitated. He shouldn’t have jumped to in the first place, no matter what the man knew—and something about Chris’ calm was getting on his nerves. “Been trying to look up an old partner they buried here about a year back, pay my respects.”

Chris’ lips thinned. He was calculating something. Then he turned to Red Harvest. “Do you see them behind him?”

Red Harvest swore in Comanache, then pulled his horse up as it started to dance. He and Sam both stared at Chris.

“Shit,” Chris said, looking between them. He was dead serious now, with a flicker here and there of disbelief. “Shit. Do you—tell me you’ve at least _noticed_. Christ, even I can goddamn see—”

“Shut up,” Red Harvest hissed in Comanche, just as Sam shouldered his horse forward.

Chris’ horse jerked its head up and bared its teeth, but it was well-trained enough that it didn’t start a fight, though it and Sam’s horse were shoulder to shoulder now. “What the hell do you mean?” Sam said.

“I mean whatever you think that you’re doing with your friend’s grave, if he really _is_ your friend, you’ll—leave him out of it. This is bad enough, and it’s still daylight out,” Chris muttered. His eyes went behind Sam for a moment, the same time that icy whispers started to mount in Sam’s ear, and then he put his hand up to his neck. He was reaching for something inside his shirt and when he got hold of it, he muttered something and—it went quiet.

Sam sucked in his breath and walked his horse back. He looked at the man again. A little more weathered, maybe the white-blond of his hair starting to owe that more to age than to the sun, but otherwise Chris looked the same. Didn’t dress any different, except for whatever was around his neck. He hadn’t been one for ornaments, had always been the plainest, even down to the dusty browns against Sam’s blacks.

“Look,” Chris said. He took a deep breath, then lifted his hand to show his palm. “After I made sure my father was dead, I…went north. Learned a few things. And what you’ve got after you, that’s something I don’t want anywhere near anyone else. And if you’re still the same Sam Chisolm I knew, you’ll agree.”

“I do,” Sam said after a moment. “I had a meeting with the preacher to talk about it tomorrow.”

“He’s not going to handle this for you,” Chris snorted. “It doesn’t have anything to do with God. What you need, you need to tell me who the hell you did business with.”

“So you can do your own deal?” Red Harvest said.

Chris didn’t look especially surprised at the English, just like he was noting it. “I don’t run bounties anymore, for anyone, dead or alive,” he said sharply. “I’m out of that. This kind of thing, I’d put it down for free, just because you just _can’t_ let it go. You can’t. If you know anything about it, you know that.”

It caught Red Harvest off-guard, the clear way Chris said that. Not just meaning it, but knowing the meaning behind it. He had real knowledge, that was clear, and yet Sam—Sam didn’t—

They were still talking, Chris and Red Harvest. Sam could hear them, but he could hear others too. Men, he thought at first, and the brief memory of a lighted saloon, glasses clinking and a joyous whoop—but it wasn’t happy, not really. Not with death in the morning and he knew that, even welcomed it. Just long enough, he thought, just long enough to see Bogue dead and then he’d hear his mother and his sisters and they were talking to him, telling him and—

“Sam!” Somebody shook him, while his wrist was twisted hard. He let go of his gun, then jerked back and got his arm free, up to strike out. “Sam, damn it to hell—how long since he came back?”

“Close to a week,” Red Harvest said. “No—a week today.”

Sam focused on the voice. He was off his horse and pushed up against a fence-post, Chris holding him with one arm while the man questioned Red Harvest, who was holding their horses. Chris swore, sprinkling some French in there. “Hell. You aren’t staying in town—tell me you aren’t staying in town.”

“No, there’s a ranch. That’s…” Red Harvest hesitated “…what about the wolves? I have never heard of wolves following one.”

“Wolves?” Chris said, even more agitated. He ignored Sam pushing him off, staring up at Red Harvest. Then he grimaced. “Shit. We need to go somewhere there aren’t so many people, and you need to tell me what happened. For the love of—if you want to keep this to yourself, fine, but for that to happen—”

“I don’t want to keep it to myself, I didn’t even _want_ it,” Sam muttered. He shook his head and staggered away from the post, trying to think. “Clayton would’ve been four—because Horne didn’t want to and I wasn’t going to make him. It was four, he told me four…and Bogue’s dead and that was supposed to be all the time I had. It was supposed to be _all_.”

Chris stood back for a second, then jerked his head at their horses. “Take me to where you’re staying.”

Sam raised his head and the man did flinch, but then he steadied. 

“Whatever it is, we need to lay it,” Chris said, a little lower. “You didn’t want to raise this, did you? I didn’t think—when we were riding together, I didn’t see a thing like this around you. I didn’t know much of it then, but the way it is now…”

“Hell, no, I didn’t mean for this to happen,” Sam said, making up his mind. “All right. All right. Red—”

Red swung them the reins. “Dark is better,” he said as they mounted up. “They come around, but they stay outside.”

“Not on the seventh day, they don’t,” Chris muttered. “Shit. Tell me we aren’t that far off.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Well-heeled' used to be slang for armed, not for well-dressed.
> 
> It really kills me that _Magnificent Seven_ is the closest we've come so far to a major motion picture about [Bass Reeves](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bass_Reeves), who was a badass, no doubt, but who also was tapped because his badassery including leveraging his knowledge and ability to move through all sorts of communities. Also, Denzel Washington's the only black face in the movie and California was probably one of the most diverse states at that point.
> 
> African-American cemeteries were frequently put at the mercies of growing towns. If you're interested in a real ghost story about a community that seemed to deliberately forget about the existence of one and built over it, Google Black Hope Curse.
> 
> Wells Fargo acted almost like a de facto government in some regions of the West. They stood behind their insurance promises by posting their own bounties for "information" leading to the arrest/death of outlaws who robbed their shipments, without waiting for a judge or other civil law enforcement investigation to officially declare said persons guilty.
> 
> I'm referencing the Buffalo Soldiers.
> 
> The entire time this movie is happening, skirmishes are ramping up in the Apache Wars. I realize that's the wrong tribe, but the wars didn't happen in a vacuum. Whenever the U.S. Army took action against one tribe, there'd be all sorts of knock-on effects with other tribes, and by this point, they were starting to ally with each other against the Army.
> 
> The Lincoln County War is _not_ the incident that happened to Sam's family, but a private war that was responsible for Billy the Kid.
> 
> In this universe, Chris Argent's family is French by way of French Canada, the ones who didn't migrate south to become Cajuns and Creoles. Historically the French had a more relaxed view towards racial intermingling, especially trappers, and so he'd stick out in a black community but he wouldn't feel as inhibited in talking to them as a white man from an American background in this period.


	4. Vasquez

For a while Alejandro thought he was making progress. The wolves were starting to react to him now, not just to Sam, and sometimes he thought it was more than just the movement, but that there was a…a _feeling_ behind it. Anger or amusement or something, something human. But then he couldn’t get any more than that, no matter what he tried. He threw a card into the fire, told Goodnight he was going to piss into the man’s flask, and nothing but the staring.

It was getting to him, he thought as he stalked outside. Like in the mountains, just before Chisolm had shown up. He’d started talking to that dead man, and he’d known it was just a joke but in the back of his head, he’d felt that little—that little edge, the one his foot was braced against. He’d looked over it.

“Goddamn fucking sons of bitches,” Alejandro exhaled into the breeze, and then he felt a little better.

He had a cigarillo. The wolves wouldn’t follow him outside, not unless Sam was out there or he’d brought one of their things with him, so he didn’t think to shut the door behind him. Maybe it was just being cooped up inside. At least at the cabin he’d been able to go into the woods every so often and stare at the deer. Hadn’t been able to shoot one, in case the sound brought someone over—he hadn’t had any idea who else might live on that mountain, if anyone did—but he could look at them. They didn’t talk back either, but then, he’d never had the thought that they might be able to.

When he turned around, the big red one was standing in the doorway and looking at him. For a second, Alejandro stiffened, but as time went on and the wolf just stared and stared at stared, he let himself slump. “This isn’t fun anymore, _guero_ ,” he sighed. “I wanted you to shut up, but I don’t like winning this way. And I don’t think you’d like it either, if you were in there. I think you’d want to be back in your grave, asleep, instead of just waiting for Chisolm all the time. None of us agreed to that.”

The red wolf raised his head, then lowered it. Then raised it again, his ears flattening back and ruff bristling. Alejandro still had half a cigarillo, and he was down to two and wasn’t about to ask either Red Harvest or Chisolm to get him more—if they would even stop arguing with each other for him to—but he stubbed it out against his boot and tucked it into a pocket for later. “I know he’s going on again, but it isn’t about you,” he told Faraday. “I don’t know what it is, but I can read men, _guero_ , and he doesn’t give a damn about you right now. He just is thinking, thinking, always thinking about a man he killed and buried and if you ask me? That should be enough. Isn’t it?”

Faraday spread his stiffened forelegs, head dropping. His lips started to curl back from his teeth.

“What?” Alejandro said, bemused. Maybe he was getting a fever from his arm, but he just couldn’t quite work up the effort to be frightened. “This is what hurts your pride? Did you think Chisolm picked you out, you were first? Oh, don’t tell me, you rode all the way up to the Gatling just to make him proud, like a father. Guess it was your mama you took after in looks, wasn’t—”

Something dark leaped past Faraday’s right side and came right at Alejandro. He spun to the left, dropping his knee, then scrambled back up with his gun out, only to remember Faraday—the big wolf was already less than a yard away, snarling and snapping and—Alejandro turned as he rushed by. Turned and then saw it.

“Oh, fuck my mother and her saints,” he hissed, scrambling backwards. Something buffeted the back of his legs, nearly knocking him over, and then Goodnight jumped over him and ran to join Billy and Faraday as they worried at the—

The lizard. It reared up taller than a man on its hind legs, front ones spread to slash wickedly long claws at the wolves, open mouth big enough to swallow a calf’s head. The backswing of its long tail was hard enough that Alejandro felt it as he raised his gun, steadying the barrel against the back of his other hand. And then the damn thing snapped out _bat-wings_.

Alejandro’s finger slipped off the trigger as he was blown back into the doorway by the powerful gust. Cursing, he rammed his shoulders against the wood and raised the gun again, only to drop it as Billy latched onto one of the monster’s wrists, worrying it as the lizard hissed and shook its foreleg. Then he saw it bring around its other front leg for a blow and shot.

Billy fell back to the ground at the same time, rolling and then staggering back onto his feet. Didn’t seem to like the taste of the lizard—dragon—whatever it was. It looked like the things on the carvings traders brought back from deeper in Mexico, and it was even angrier now, contorting its head and neck this way and that as it shrieked. Faraday took a bite at its leg and it whirled, too fast for its size, and laid open a bloody streak along the wolf’s side. 

Yelping, Faraday stumbled backwards, while Goodnight and Billy surged up in two different directions. It didn’t work, the wings gave the beast more limbs to fend them off with, and they were rolling tail-over-head when Alejandro put three bullets in the monster’s head. One in the eye, one in the back of the mouth and he _saw_ the little chip flying off the fang, he did.

The beast fell back onto all four legs, wings folding, and Alejandro doubled over, slapping his gun against his knee for support and gasping for breath he hadn’t realized he’d been denying himself. His ribs pressed too hard against his lungs as the wolves—the wolves. 

They weren’t running forward. Faraday had gotten back up, and Alejandro—stared a moment, as the skin along the wolf’s side knit up as he watched. Then he realized what that could mean and swore and got the gun up just as the dragon leaped up into the air, wings spread, black blood dripping off its gory but _whole_ head, even the eyes.

Alejandro wheeled around, trying to keep his back to the wood, and fired again, but the thing was even faster in the air and he only shot a hole in one of the wings. Which didn’t seem to hamper it much as it dove sharply at him.

He slammed himself back into the room, knocking his head against the beams hard enough that for a moment he was seeing stars dance. Then, still dazed, he groped his way to the left side of the door, trying to remember how many shots he’d made, how many left in the gun. He could see the wolves leaping at something, and sometimes a tail or flashing claw coming back at them from above. 

“Get—back inside,” he grunted. Then shook his head. English, he told himself. “Get in! Get in, you—”

Billy loped in, then twisted in the doorway to bark roughly. Faraday ran over a few feet, then stopped to hulk himself up and growl—showy idiot, Alejandro thought, just as something blurred at the wolf. 

He shot the damn thing in the neck, but when it backed off, Faraday still had blood all over his shoulder, with bits of hanging skin that flapped when he ran. And then Faraday’s leg buckled. He jerked back up and almost went over the other way, overcompensating, wide blown eyes on Alejandro as he crumpled down in the dirt. He was still alive, his ears were moving, but no matter how much Alejandro yelled, he wouldn’t get up.

Or maybe—Alejandro spared a glance at the dragon. Goodnight was even further off, growling and jumping like a grasshopper, like he was trying to distract it, but that wouldn’t work for long. He looked back at Faraday and yes, he could see the muscles bunching under the fur, could almost feel the strain of them himself. But the wolf wasn’t actually moving, as if he—couldn’t.

He was only a yard and a half away. Alejandro bounced on his knee, then, swearing, dropped his gun and lunged out of the ranch-house. He went so hard that he skidded a little past Faraday, but that was fine, that braced his boot so that when he got his good arm around the wolf’s belly, he was set to push himself back in the—

The dragon whipped its wing and the backwash carried Alejandro into the ranchhouse like he was a skipping stone across the pond. He even skipped once, jarring him and Faraday apart, and then the fireplace stones stopped him in the kidney. It _hurt_.

In the doorway, the dragon was wing-to-wing with the jambs, with its head dipped down to stare right at Alejandro. Clear stuff was running off its fangs, and somehow he thought it wasn’t spit but something else, something that made his blood go cold. He dug his elbow under him, tried to push up—Billy was over by the doorway, up on his hindlegs and shaking all over in his efforts to paw at the door—and the dragon—

A rifle-shot cracked through the air. The dragon aborted its lunge at the ranch-house and wheeled up out of sight, screeching. Alejandro could still hear the flap of its wings, but as more shots came, the beat of them broke up. There was a fierce shriek and then a tremendous thump on one side of the roof, followed by a second one to the side of the building that dragged out.

“Aim for the wings!” shouted someone Alejandro didn’t know, a man.

“The damn thing just heals back up—” Sam, angry and disbelieving.

“I know, aim for the bones, if you break them they’ll heal but they’ll heal crooked and that’ll buy time—” the stranger went on, over another round of gunfire.

Red Harvest ran into the room. He spun around, then nearly ran back out before he spotted Alejandro. Then his eyes dropped to Faraday, who was still lying on the ground, eyes bulging, the occasional tremor running through them.

“Can’t move, it bit him,” Alejandro grunted. He levered himself up against the fireplace, then choked as warm, salty fluid rose up his throat. “Shut—shut the—”

A blond man with a rifle ducked into the room. Billy stopped going at the door and nearly jumped on him, but Red Harvest dropped to one knee, grabbed him, and swung him away. The man didn’t so much as flinch, just grimaced and twisted around, aiming at something outside. He let off a shot, then flattened himself to the side as Sam scrambled in.

Sam tripped over Faraday, who managed a strangled but distinctly pained noise. Alejandro got over onto one knee, spat a mouthful on the floor—did his best to not look at the color—and dragged his good arm forward to get hold of Faraday’s back leg. He yanked and Sam somehow understood, got his own arm under Faraday’s head and shoved the wolf back towards Alejandro. Then frowned. 

“Wait,” Sam said. “Weren’t there three—”

“Shut the damn door, I need to reload,” the stranger said, leveling his rifle at the doorway.

Red Harvest had let go of Billy and was hauling at the door. Just as the gap narrowed, the stranger fired a last shot, then stepped back to yank the rifle out of the way. As he did, a puff of dirty grass kicked across the threshold and Alejandro saw a gray shape coming up.

He opened his mouth, but before he could speak, somebody else yelled. There was a blur across the room, and then the door was shut and something banged up against it as Red Harvest rammed the barring plank after it, and Billy Rocks, naked as a newborn, was lying on his side with his hands wrapped in Robicheaux’s ruff.

Alejandro had just enough time to see that, and then they lost all the light as the stranger lunged across the room and used his rifle-butt to slap the window shut. “Latch isn’t strong,” Alejandro said.

“Yeah, saw that, but…” The stranger’s voice trailed off in a way that gave Alejandro the impression he was looking at something.

It was quiet save for the sound of all of their breathing, hard and fast and rough. The dragon…Alejandro strained his ears, but he couldn’t hear the damn thing. He didn’t think it was gone.

“What the _hell_ was that?” Sam hissed.

The stranger’s boots creaked. He was stepping away from the window. Then a match hissed and flared to life, and he held it up so that they could all see him pointing his rifle at the window. “You have a lantern in here? They don’t see that well in light.”

They did have a lantern. Red Harvest got it and held it for the stranger, and then set it down in the middle of the floor. By then Sam had noticed Billy, and Billy had noticed all of them. He was still holding onto Goodnight, who was intent on something about the back left corner.

His fingers had claws on them. Alejandro sucked his breath when he noticed and Billy caught on, looked down and startled, the first time Alejandro thought he’d ever seen the man off-guard. Even Robicheaux leaving hadn’t seemed to surprise him. 

“The hell?” Billy said, and then actually dropped Goodnight as black fur started to crawl up his arms. His eyes widened and he pushed his arms out like he was trying to get away from them.

“Calm down, the last thing we need is the inside getting torn up,” the stranger said, annoyed. Then he looked harder at Billy. “You—you know how?”

“To what?” Billy said, still staring at his arms. The fur receded a little, then went back up his arm and then some, getting almost to his shoulders as his breathing started to speed up.

“ _Shit_ ,” the stranger said. “When did you get bit?”

“ _What_ ,” Billy said.

At the same time, Sam grimaced and raised his hand. “I was telling you—”

“Yeah, I know, you said you broke them out of the coffins but they have to have gotten bitten before that if they came back,” the stranger said impatiently. He’d dug some bullets out and was reloading his rifle with irritated but efficient motions. When he’d finished that, he tucked the rifle under one arm, still looking at the window, and pulled out a revolver. It was already loaded but he swapped out the bullets. “A bite can bring people back from the edge but—”

“They weren’t bitten,” Red Harvest said, and then nodded at a grim Sam. “ _He_ did it.”

“I did,” Sam agreed. He paused, eyes sliding to Billy and then to Alejandro, then looked up at the stranger. “Wolf’s paw I got, it was how—how I knew it’d all really happened. I pulled out the claws and kept them around, and when I realized I had a body for each one, I—I stuck them with those. They were _dead_ , Chris. Faraday wasn’t even in one piece, and Goody and Billy had more holes through them than a miner’s pan.”

Billy whipped around and stared at Sam. Fur was crawling up his back, and something about his legs looked wrong to Alejandro—wrong shape. Then they were like they should be, but it’d spread to Billy’s shoulders that were curving broader than they should. And then Alejandro noticed that this Chris was aiming his gun at Billy.

“I’m not shooting him if he can just control himself,” Chris said, catching Alejandro at the same time. He looked at Alejandro, then Sam, then Billy. Then around the room till he spotted something: Alejandro’s gun. He holstered his own pistol, then picked up the gun off the floor and loaded it with two bullets. “I only have so many of these, so if you have to shoot, aim it at a bone.”

He flipped the revolver around butt-first and offered it to Billy. After a moment, Billy took it. Glanced at it, then again, and then looked over at Alejandro, surprised. “You made it?”

“Well, I shoot better than this one,” Alejandro said, nodding at Faraday. He pulled the wolf up onto his knee and he thought the wolf’s breathing got better, but Faraday’s paws were still twitching like somebody had run him onto barbed wire and he’d gotten stuck there. “What did it do to him?”

“And what is it?” Sam repeated.

“It’s called a kanima.” Chris had pulled out another handful of bullets and was passing them to Red Harvest, who was loading guns for the rest of them. “It’s got poisoned teeth, and if it bites you, you can’t move for a couple hours. It’s not gone, it’s just probably straightening its wings out. It’s not going to leave till either whoever sent it calls it off, or it’s done whatever it was sent to do.”

Red Harvest slid Alejandro’s gun over to him, took one for himself, and then handed one to Sam. Seemed a little reluctant to do so. Sam didn’t take offense, but Billy looked on with a raised brow. And then two raised ones, as Goodnight decided to get up and walk over to Sam, nosing at Sam’s knee.

“So these bullets,” Billy said, holding up his gun. “Special?”

“Silver-tipped with mountain ash cores,” Chris said. He glanced at Red. “Those arrows of yours, they’re—”

“Not that,” Red Harvest said.

Chris grimaced. “Well, they’re not going to kill the damn thing either, but it won’t heal as fast as if you use lead. It shouldn’t matter that much at this range, but these are a little lighter, they don’t shoot the same as straight lead. Keep that in mind and you get a couple more minutes.”

“To do what?” Alejandro said. Faraday was trembling against his leg, but when he bent over to try and look at the wolf, his entire back and ribs flared up in pain. He slouched back, biting down on the pain. “Sit around and wait for this thing’s boss?”

“I wasn’t suggesting we stay for that,” Chris said. He looked at Alejandro, then at Faraday. Then he eased down on one knee, keeping his rifle pointed at the window and his other hand in the air. He looked at Alejandro again, waiting till Alejandro sighed and nodded, and then reached to push the bloody fur back from the sticky, clotted holes in Faraday’s neck and shoulder. “We all need to be able to get on our feet anyway. Can you turn back?”

That was to Billy, who looked blank for a second. Then he hissed and took two quick glances at Faraday and Goodnight, before looking down at his arms. The fur had retreated to his wrists, but the claws were still there. “Wait. I—what happened after the—the Gatling, I remember—”

“Right, never mind that,” Chris muttered, turning back. “Look, I can tell you’re caring for him, so don’t take this the wrong way. I’m just trying to make it go faster.”

“Wha—” Alejandro started and then Chris whipped out a knife and stabbed Faraday in the back leg.

Alejandro was up and reaching for the man’s throat when something kicked into his gut. He coughed, thinking that wasn’t much, and then the world rushed up and shook him by the throat and everything went black.

* * *

“…got married?” someone was saying when Alejandro woke up again.

Still in the kitchen. The lantern wasn’t burnt too much lower, he thought, and he had a good look at the oil level with his cheek pressed to the ground. Billy still looked mad as hell about his claws.

“I can’t believe that out of a warrant officer in _seven_ states, a hairpin killer, a rogue Comanche, a man with an entire _bag_ of silver bullets and Vasquez sleepin’ it off there, the best you can come up with is, somebody’s wife is goin’ to miss them!” snapped a familiar voice.

Alejandro moved. Which hurt. Too much for him to be dreaming, and then he got his head up and a very naked Faraday turned around, outrage wiping off his face in favor of surprise. “ _Guerito_ , you’re back,” he rasped, laughing even though that was a very bad idea right now. 

Then he started to cough, and then to choke on what the cough raised in his throat.

Red Harvest had moved over to Alejandro’s side of the room at some point, and helped him sit up while Faraday made an aborted movement towards them, then drew back. He looked angry about it, and then he turned into a big red wolf. But not—this one, it was anything but lifeless. It tripped over its own legs, then got back up, ears and ruff sticking at odds with each other, so humanly annoyed that Alejandro started laughing again.

“You should stop that,” Billy advised him, very seriously. “I…I smell something, in you, and I don’t think it’s good.”

“He probably tore something inside,” Chris said. He was still standing where he’d been before, but he had blood on the side of his face. Sam was standing next to him, rips in his shirt that Alejandro didn’t remember from before, and the room smelled like burnt powder. There were fresh wooden splinters scattered across the floor.

Alejandro stopped laughing. “What happened?”

“It tried coming through the door and we shot its wings again. Dragged up some floorboards from the other room to close that up again,” Sam said. He wiped at his cheek. “Chris—this is Chris Argent, we rode together on a few warrants. He says his wife should be coming any second, and we just need to wait for that.”

“We were going to meet at the hotel for dinner,” Chris said, mostly to Sam. “She would’ve needed some time to get a horse out and follow, but she should’ve made up the difference by now.”

The big red wolf shivered all over, then let out a sharp growl. Turned towards Sam and the gray wolf slipped out from where it’d been lurking behind Sam’s legs, but Faraday hadn’t been going after the man, after all—he shivered again, and then his back legs twisted out from under him. Alejandro wasn’t the only one who winced at the _pop-pop-pop_ of bone.

Then it finished, and Faraday the man was sprawled out on the floor again. “I think I speak for all of us when I say nobody gives a damn—” his eyes slid over to Alejandro and he faltered, looking for something, and then roused back up when Alejandro just shrugged at him “—about your social calendar, even if this woman’s the bride of Satan herse—”

A loud scream came from outside, followed right after by an earth-shaking series of thuds against the roof. Alejandro saw one beam bend to cracking under the weight. He jerked his arm up, but his hand was empty—the others were all scrambling to point their guns at the ceiling, even Faraday, with the gun Alejandro had had.

And then there was another scream. It—it wasn’t so much louder as more _through_. Went through you like a knife, like the way a cowboy Alejandro had worked with talked about winter in Montana. Cold and quick and when you gasped after, you were surprised your lungs didn’t fall out.

One second of silence. Then, slow, something scraped against the roof. Chris threw an arm out, keeping Sam from shooting it, and signaled for them to listen. The scrape came again, and then two, then four, and then there was a small avalanche coming off the roof. Chris turned with the noise, deliberately waited, and then shouldered his rifle and went over to start trying to unblock the door.

“Chris,” came a sharp, strong female voice. “Chris, I swear to God, if you’re not in there and I’ve just broken a perfectly good horse coming out to this godforsaken—”

“Yeah, I’m coming, just give me a—” Chris knocked out the plank, then stepped through the hole.

“His wife?” Alejandro managed.

Sam made a small motion with his free hand. “Didn’t know he’d gotten married, I really didn’t.”

Alejandro snorted, then hissed as a dull but persistent pain dug up through the middle of his chest. Faraday twisted around and reached for him, then pulled back the hand and jerked his chin at Alejandro instead. “Might as well get him out, can’t breathe for shit in here,” he said to Red Harvest.

Red Harvest obligingly started to stand Alejandro on his feet. It hurt, but…had to be done, since Alejandro didn’t want to spend a second more in this damn room either. He gritted his teeth and ignored how much the world blurred out.

When he could see again, Sam had joined and he and Red Harvest were easing Alejandro down in the grass. Billy was still in the ranch-house, moving things around, while Faraday was squatting in the doorway with Goodnight next to him. Chris was a few yards away, standing next to a red-haired, very good-looking woman in a very nice dress who had a hacksaw in her hand.

“I hope you weren’t expecting me to find something better _on top_ of tracking you and your friends here,” she was saying, as they both looked at something on the ground. “I literally robbed a doctor tonight, Chris.”

“No, this’ll do,” Chris said, rolling up his sleeves.

He took the hacksaw from her, gave her his rifle in exchange, and walked over to where a feebly-twitching dragon—no, _kanima_ , he’d called it—was splayed out on its back. It trembled the way that Faraday had after taking its poison. When Chris put the hacksaw to its throat and started cutting off its head while it was still alive, even Alejandro looked away.

The woman was staring at them, her arms folded over her chest. “Lydia Martin.”

“Well, that’s interesting,” Faraday drawled. “I did recall him introducing himself as Chris _Argent_. Joshua Faraday, ma’am.”

“Faraday?” the woman said, recognition coming into her face. But before Faraday could do more than start to look pleasantly surprised, she put her hand over her face. “The Faraday who was responsible for that Fort Sumner debacle? Chris, how did you _meet_ these people?”

“Wait a second, I—that was _not_ my fault,” Faraday said, ruffled. He had the same problem as Billy where his fingers kept having claws on the ends of them. He’d jerk his hand down whenever he saw them. “All I did was run one nice, clean—”

“It’s hardly clean when they pass a _town ordinance_ after you left, specifically against having an interest in a faro table,” Lydia said. “That town was a good, solid, paying stop and you ruined it for all of us.”

“I think she _does_ know you, _guero_ ,” Alejandro couldn’t help saying.

Faraday looked at him, irritated, and at the same time the inside of Alejandro’s chest twisted, making him cough and sag against Sam. “All right, all right,” Sam said. “Can this wait?”

Lydia pressed her lips together. She didn’t seem like the type to wait on anyone, Alejandro thought, wiping at his mouth. But then she nodded. “He’s not going to die but he’s going to get worse if we don’t get him help,” she said. “And usually if someone sends a _kanima_ , they’re not that far behind.”

“Sam said they weren’t bitten,” Chris said, over the wet, grating rasp of the hacksaw. “They were dead, and he brought—brought ‘em back with wolf claws somebody gave him.”

“I don’t…” Sam faltered, oddly, though he wasn’t looking at anyone but Lydia, and he obviously didn’t know her. He was tensing up against Alejandro. “I’m Sam. Sam Chisolm. I—used to be a warrant officer, and then I went after a man—I’d been waiting a long time to watch him die. I thought I’d bought that time, and before you ask, no, I don’t know who. I wasn’t in a position to ask. Those sons of bitches had just hung me and I was surprised as hell that _I_ was back from the dead.”

Same story he’d told before, but it still caught Alejandro by surprise. He felt Red Harvest start too, and then there was some sort of scuffle behind them. He tried to turn and see, but the pain that’d been mounting in him crested and he just couldn’t stay around for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In TW lore, a _kanima_ is a type of shapeshifter. Shifting is implied to be linked to mental stability, so if a person with emotional/psychological issues is bitten by a werewolf, they may turn into a kanima instead of a proper werewolf. Kanimas are weak-willed when they're in their lizard state and can be manipulated by others, like a telepathically-controlled attack dog. It's also implied that after a certain point, a kanima loses all sense of its humanity and can no longer change back.
> 
> The kanima bite will paralyze humans and werewolves alike for hours at a time, although if a werewolf is sufficiently injured, its healing power apparently can fast-forward the process of purging the venom. So Chris is in fact trying to help Faraday recover by stabbing him.
> 
> Look, nobody (much less me) ever said that TW made sense.
> 
> Silver is technically not part of werewolf canon in TW, but a kanima is covered with scales and this seems to provide some sort of bullet resistance (show's a little unclear, but the kanima doesn't seem to notice being shot at all, while werewolves do, they just heal from it really fast). [Anecdotally](http://hurog.com/articles/silver/silverbullets.shtml), silver-tipped bullets seem like they'd have better penetrating power than the regular bullets of the period. So Chris is mixing metals for that, not for the evil-killing effect.
> 
> You usually couldn't make much of a living by just gambling. The more successful gamblers would manage at least a table at a local saloon, as kind of a mini-casino. It was common for a couple men to pool their money to act as the casino "bank" and then take shares out of the profits.


	5. Robicheaux

The Robicheaux of Metairie had excellent memories, and Goodnight, often to his regret, had carried on that tradition. He could remember the ornate engravings on the family silver, the different but no less intricate patterns some of his family’s slaves had carved into the lintels of their shacks. The spiraling splatter of blood his first kill had left on the side of a Union cannon.

So it was something of a surprise to lift his head off the ground and find he had no idea where he was, or how he’d gotten there, or what in God’s name Sam and Billy were doing with what appeared to be a half-decapitated dragon.

“ _Kanima_. I’m making sure it doesn’t come back,” explained a man Sam had curtly introduced as Chris Argent, a former warrant officer. He grunted and bore down hard on the hacksaw he was currently employing on the dragon’s neck. “When they do, they always come back bigger.”

“I told you, he’s not dying _yet_ ,” said the man’s wife, a Lydia Martin. 

Faraday, naked and nakedly furious, was glaring at her from where he and Red Harvest were kneeling by an unconscious and decidedly battered-looking Vasquez. “Oh, and you can tell that all the way from over there?” he snapped. “I’ll admit, you’re so doused in rosewater I can’t smell much, but I can smell—”

“If you can’t hold your shift yet, I doubt you can smell the difference between your blood—” Lydia gestured at the smears all over Faraday’s throat and chest “—and his. And anyway, my point is, if you want it to _stay_ he’s not dying yet, then we need to leave.”

“I don’t think anyone’s arguing there, all right?” Sam interrupted. Even he didn’t look how Goodnight remembered him, and Goodnight remembered enough to know nothing short of the flames of hell could put any sweat on Sam’s brow. He looked worn, and looked like it didn’t matter to him who saw it. “But Vasquez isn’t fit for it, and we’ve lost most of the horses—”

Red Harvest got up. “I will find them.”

“You’re taking yours?” Lydia said, glancing over. She didn’t wait for Red Harvest to acknowledge it, but instead stepped backwards towards a horse placidly munching the grass behind her. “Chris, I stopped yours back at the—”

“The snag?” Chris muttered.

“Which leaves his, so he can keep up with them,” Lydia said, apparently meaning Sam, since his horse was the only other one Goodnight could see around. “You can put the other one on a plank and even if your friends can’t figure out how to stay on all fours, they should be able to carry him one way or the other. You’ll have to swing wide of town so when I raise Erica, I’ll see if we can catch you at the windmill.”

“Sounds good,” Chris said, still sawing away at the dragon. He hadn’t even looked up.

Faraday patently did not like this plan. “Forgive me for sounding ungrateful about whatever you did to— _that_ ,” he started, waving his arm at the dragon. “But—”

“Get your pack in line, would you?” Lydia said, ignoring him and addressing Sam. She swung herself up into the saddle, managing the rifle she held with confidence, and then pulled her horse’s head around. “I can speak to the local alpha and get her to help your friend, but only if you get him to her with enough blood left in him. And I don’t know where you learned your medicine but werewolf healing isn’t a transitive property. Sticking him on your horse and ripping his guts open further isn’t going to help.”

Chris made a startled noise, then pushed away from the dragon and started to get up. His wife was already riding away; he stared after her, one hand raised, and then turned with a faintly apologetic look to Sam. “I didn’t tell her—I didn’t know till you told me.”

“I don’t even know what,” Sam started to say in a sharp, exasperated tone, and then he pulled himself in tight. He rubbed at his hand, then spun around as Faraday—was undergoing some sort of jerking fit, and then suddenly was a very large wolf equipped with very prominently-bared fangs. “Faraday, _no_.”

The wolf had been coiled back as if to leap, and in the direction of the Martin woman, but Sam had barely opened his mouth when it—he—pulled himself up short. At the same time, Billy, who’d been just looking on with one of those stony expressions of his, let out an oddly constricted snarl. And Goodnight—he felt something entirely out-of-place, a sudden wave of fear-swamped frustration that propelled him up off the ground and onto his hands and toes before he could help himself. The emotion wasn’t his own, he was quite sure, but it was so strong his body literally _twisted_ with it, twisted and oh.

As soon as his body changed, it changed back, and he was left staring at his perfectly familiar hands. Which had, he thought with a calm he recognized was alarming, been paws.

“She’s right, we need to get him help and we need to get away from here,” Chris was saying in a low voice. He leveled a look at Sam, until the other man gave him a curt nod. Stepped back and kicked at the dragon’s head. There’d been a little bit of flesh still connecting it, but the kick broke it and it rolled off several feet. “Using a plank probably makes sense too. Even on two legs, they can run faster than you or I can walk—my horse doesn’t mind them, and looks like yours doesn’t either. It’d be the fastest.”

“I don’t understand that,” Sam said, with a quietness that made Goodnight tense. He started to lift one hand as if to brush over his face, then cut it down to his hip, gaze suddenly fiery enough that Chris, who hadn’t been so relaxed as his tone had made out, flicked the hacksaw around to point between them. “I don’t understand _any_ of this, and—and I told you what happened, and none of that—I didn’t ask for any of this. _Any_ of it.”

“Yeah, well, usually you don’t, that’s the trouble,” Chris said. Blunt, but not unsympathetic, if Goodnight was reading him correctly. “Look, what are you looking to do here? Talk about it? Or save your friend?”

Sam exhaled in a way that almost was words, and—almost, Goodnight hated to admit, sounded like an answer. An answer that Faraday also caught, and he’d recovered enough from whatever Sam had pulled on him to raise his head and snarl. That fear came back at Goodnight, eating his nerves, too much like and yet not the fears he already knew so well, and he stood up before he could think more than _not another one_. “Sam,” he said. Then started to repeat the name, only for Sam to turn. “S—forgive me for interrupting, seeing as I am, I’m afraid, last to this, but—”

He caught Sam’s eye and for a second he and his friend looked at each other and God, Goodnight thought, Sam looked as if—then Sam put his shoulder to him. “Hell. All right, plank—plank, Faraday, since we don’t have a wagon. Faster we rip one up, faster we can get Vasquez somewhere that doesn’t have a goddamn dead dragon in it. Then we’ll have it out.”

Faraday wasn’t ever going to disobey, no matter how viciously he looked at Sam; his body was already turning towards the building. Goodnight, relieved for reasons he couldn’t quite trace back to their source, dropped back onto his knees. “Billy,” he said. He paused, then swallowed; he sounded as if he hadn’t spoken in years. “Billy, what on earth. I thought we’d died.”

“We did,” Billy said, in much the same tone Chris had just used on Sam.

“Oh,” Goodnight said after a long moment. “Well. I can see this is going to be _fascinating_.”

* * *

Faster and stronger, with keen powers of hearing and smell, and the ability to heal from all the manner of injuries, were the powers of a werewolf, as recounted by Chris Argent. The first four were immediately verified as they got Vasquez up on a makeshift stretcher and took turns carrying him at pace with the trotting horses. Vasquez was an impressive figure, even unconscious, and the plank was sturdy enough that it had to have been imported, yet Goodnight found he could manage his end easily enough with one hand and still have enough breath left to carry on a conversation.

“So you’re telling me, we’ve returned from the dead as newly-made werewolves, only to be hunted down by unknown interested parties who are proficient in the ways of black magic,” Goodnight summarized, to the accompaniment of the occasional nod from Chris. “Since as it turns out, the world as we presumed it is really only half-so. Good lord, if my old wet-nurse could hear this, she’d be lecturing us end-to-end on funeral etiquette. She had half a dozen ways for how you stop the rougarou from rising.”

“Best that she isn’t hearing it, then, since rising’s my preferred state,” Faraday muttered from the right side of the plank. “And what the hell is a rougarou?”

“Loup garou’s a werewolf,” Chris said. “Just another name for it.”

He had an interesting inflection, enough to make Goodnight consider the man’s name more closely. Not Cajun or Creole, so far as Goodnight knew, and he did think he recollected the families, but not exactly the classical French Goodnight’s imported tutors had attempted to train into him. 

“I wasn’t trying to do it,” Sam said, interrupting Goodnight’s thoughts. He was staring straight ahead. His hips were rocking easy enough with the horse but when Goodnight looked for it, he spotted the clench of the man’s jaw. “I’m not about to…to go about trying to undo it either, but you should know. It wasn’t my aim, bringing any of you back. I didn’t even know—it wasn’t what I thought I was doing.”

Faraday’s temper had settled down considerably since they’d started making progress, but he still was directing the odd hostility at Sam, as now with his look. Then he stumbled and cursed, yanking his hand away from the plank as his body contorted. He’d been going from man to wolf to man enough that that was why they’d put him on the side rather than one of the ends.

“Don’t get angry, that’s going to keep you shifting back,” Chris said, eyeing Faraday. “Try and think about something you like doing.”

In response, Faraday offered a few pointed suggestions about what Chris might like, which the other man took with commendable lack of expression. They made Sam frown and ease back on his horse so he dropped level with Faraday.

Goodnight glanced at Billy, who seemed to agree with him—and then turned around, choosing to trudge along instead of indicate which side he’d cover, as was his usual. He’d been standoffish since—well, since they’d _died_.

“Are you speaking from experience?” Goodnight asked Chris, to distract himself. He was a little too fresh to this to really feel much over the confusion swamping him, and perhaps that wasn’t the worst way to come back to life.

“Secondhand.” Chris considered him for a second. “I’m not a werewolf. Neither is my wife. We both live with some—we’re familiar with them, and I’ve seen an alpha bring along a new beta before.”

“I can see this new world is going to greatly expand my vocabulary,” Goodnight observed, and when that earned him a sigh from Billy, he felt better.

Chris took him up on the implied invitation as well, though with an odd, careful look at Sam. “Werewolves live in groups, packs. The leader’s called an alpha, the rest are betas, and ones who don’t have packs are omegas. When you’re bitten, there’s a lot that’s different—it takes some time to get used to it. There’s a…a way, they call it anchoring. You figure out how to control when you’re a wolf and when you’re a man.”

“So this isn’t tied to the moon?” Goodnight asked.

“Well, no, there’s—some things around the full moon. But you should be able to change whenever you want. It’s only a half-moon now,” Chris said, glancing up. He kept looking up as he scratched some dried blood on the side of his face. “It’s interesting none of you are complaining about hearing or smelling too much.”

“What do you mean?” Sam asked. Except for when they’d first started, when he’d caught them all up on what’d happened since Rose Creek—which Sam had done in about forty clipped words—he’d mostly stayed out of the conversation. In fact, he’d spent most of the ride looking as if he wished he was anywhere but here.

According to him, it’d been just about a week. That was sufficient time to turn a man’s world upside-down, Goodnight would allow, but for it to change Sam Chisolm into someone who didn’t welcome any kind of company…Faraday and Billy and Vasquez were all relatively recent acquaintances, but Goodnight had known the man when he’d had a family. And while the War had taught Goodnight never to presume the humanity of his fellow men, he did think that was worth something to Sam.

“It’s something new wolves complain about, a lot,” Chris said after a long pause, which he’d spent watching Sam like someone with a gun and a full barrel and any sense would still watch a full-grown bear in close proximity to them. “Keeps them from focusing, doesn’t help with learning to shift. Alphas spend a lot of time working on that with them.”

“Well, if I recall, you said generally werewolves aren’t made by raising the dead,” Goodnight said. “I don’t suppose that might be a reason why?”

Chris started to reply, only to hold back as Sam made an irritated noise. “Said I wasn’t trying to do that,” Sam muttered.

“I didn’t suggest you were. After all, as far as I know, you didn’t have any more inclination to such things than my daddy, and he could barely be persuaded to pay for enough masses to keep us in good standing with the parish,” Goodnight said, succumbing to irritation. He shifted the plank to his other hand—one flex and the blisters on the one he’d been using went away, but his newfound state of being didn’t stop them from rising in the first place—and then reached towards the other man. “When did you get those claws, Sam? The ones you said you dropped in our coffins? When I got to you, and I thought it was right after they—”

“I didn’t tell you everything, Goodnight,” Sam snapped.

“Obviously,” Goodnight snapped back.

Faraday and Chris were staring at them. Even Billy, though he had his back to it all, was listening, with an intentness that communicated itself across the intervening space. And Sam knew Goodnight remembered. The man’s face said it all—wanting to look away but he couldn’t, because he remembered, and he at least was going to live up to that. Which was the Sam Goodnight had thought he’d known.

Just then Vasquez stirred on the plank, and if that wasn’t enough to break Sam away from Goodnight’s stare, the yelp Faraday let out did the rest of the work. Vasquez twitched, his leg moving so Goodnight had to catch the ankle and guide it back onto the wood, and then slumped back, pale under the thick stubble.

“You could try pulling his pain out,” Chris said, with clear reluctance, as Vasquez kept twitching. “That’s a thing—but you’re all this new, and I can’t tell you how to do it, and I know you can hurt yourself—”

“Mr. Argent, grateful as I am that you’ve been taking your time elucidating these matters for us, I think Vasquez and I would both appreciate your getting to the point,” Goodnight said, still irritated at Sam.

Billy snorted. Chris pressed his lips together, probably more because of whatever was eating him, and then shrugged. “You heal better than someone who’s not a werewolf, right? So you touch them, and you…they say it’s like breathing in their air. You let their pain go into you, and you can heal so you can take it. It’s not going to fix what’s wrong with them but it makes it better, for a while. It just…can go too far. You can pass out.”

“Well, we’ll knock Goodnight over if that happens,” Sam said. Then turned his head a little. “Or did you—”

“No,” Faraday said, with a flush that would’ve damned him even if his hand hadn’t jumped towards and away from Vasquez’s arm. He started to say something else, tone unnaturally jocular, and then his words strangled.

He twisted away, doubling over, bones pushing up against the skin in inhuman ways, and Sam sidestepped his horse towards the man, telling Faraday over and over in a quiet, insistent voice that there was no need to be upset. Wasn’t thinking about it, just was doing it, when he’d been insisting over and over—Goodnight turned away from that, since much as he hated to admit it, Sam would have to wait. He knew how cussed stubborn the man could be.

Instead Goodnight considered the man lying in front of him. They’d taken off Vasquez’s boots and stuffed them in one of Sam’s saddlebags, since the heels had kept turning the man’s legs off the plank and those limbs were unwieldy enough without that. Healing, Goodnight thought. “Maman always liked the idea of a doctor in the family,” he muttered, as Sam hissed at Faraday to calm down, think about a poker game or a good hand.

He put his fingertips to the top of Vasquez’s foot. Cold, though it was a warm night. Not so cold that he thought _death_ , but…cold. Cold blowing into him whenever he’d thought the owl was coming close, and while all the times before that had been enough to bring Goodnight to his knees, this time it…felt different.

He could feel an end to it, he thought. It went cold into him but then it petered out, and he was still walking and breathing and seeing the world. 

Vasquez’s breathing got noticeably slower and more relaxed. “Interesting,” Goodnight said, just then seeing the dark, black veining that pulled from his fingertips up his arm. It looked alarming but it faded away before it hit the elbow. “With something like this, why on earth does anyone want to kill a werewolf?”

“Well, usually, you’re fighting,” Chris said, with enough sternness that Goodnight looked up. The other man wasn’t looking at him, but forward, at something on the horizon: a windmill. “We’re coming up on Erica’s land. Lydia should’ve gotten to her, but still, let me do the introductions. They’ve got their own customs for packs meeting each other.”

“Back before the War, when we went to church, you had an order for how you filed into the pews, and God help you if you broke it,” Goodnight said. “Dueling was the _merciful_ way of settling it.”

Chris sighed. “Yeah, something like that.”

* * *

Erica Reyes, as the local alpha was named, was a slight, surprisingly young woman with the blonde curls and porcelain beauty of a cherub and an unnerving tendency to let her eyes go blood-red whenever she smiled. “Well, once you clean them up, I can see the promise,” she said, running her eyes over Goodnight and the rest. “Chris sent you ahead to spare your virgin eyes?”

“I’m on my second marriage, as you know, and I’m _quite_ satisfied,” Lydia, who was waiting beside Erica, said dryly, as Chris just busied himself with getting off his horse. “Chris knows the leader from before, when he was going after bounties. They were riding together after Blackwood. Stiles and I ran into them up in Shasta Springs, before Kali turned on you.”

Sam started, then looked at Lydia more closely. She raised her brows, but let her husband take up the rest. “This is Sam Chisolm,” Chris said to Erica, who also was doing some clear reassessing in light of Lydia’s information. “He did help me go after my father’s men, and after Blackwood’s pack. And these are his men. He’s got another coming—not a werewolf, I don’t think—”

“Well, I don’t know that you _could_ tell with him,” Faraday muttered under his breath. 

That earned him a sharp look from Chris, and then one from Sam. Who’d been slow off the mark there because he didn’t like something Chris had said. But he gave himself a shake and walked up beside Chris, either not seeing or disregarding the warning look the man was now turning on him. “Ma’am, we need assistance,” he said. “I realize you don’t have any reason to give it, aside from maybe Christian charity, but I am asking for it.”

“Did you—” Chris was whispering urgently to Lydia.

“I want to hear about this _kanima_ ,” Erica said. She shrugged off Chris’s attempt to intercept her and stepped right up to Sam, one hand cocked on her hip, a teasing smile on her face, and a cool look in her eyes. She tipped her head up at him as he stared back, then sniffed.

The wrinkle of her nose was exaggerated for dramatics; the way her face contorted immediately after wasn’t. She got control over herself, but not before Goodnight had glimpsed the outline of the beast against her delicate features. She dropped back a step, the flirt gone, and her stance was such that Goodnight was surprised not to find a stiletto or derringer in either of her hands.

“No,” Lydia murmured. Her lips didn’t even move but Goodnight heard it, and looked over in time to catch her pressing her hand back over Chris’ stomach as the other man watched.

“Then again, seems like that’s the shortest story you’ve got,” Erica said after a long, strained silence. She put her hand to her lip, then glanced off to the side. She had people back in the long grass—three of them, not visible at all but those were heartbeats drumming in the back of Goodnight’s head, he suddenly realized. Then she looked back at Sam. “I’ve got people to think about. This is why I’m letting you in.”

“Ma’am,” Sam said, inclining his head, though Goodnight had known him long enough to read the confusion off of that small motion.

It didn’t make much sense to Goodnight either, but given how Vasquez was doing, he wasn’t inclined to raise it, and neither were the rest of them. Faraday nearly rolled himself into a wolf again, he was so eager to get started over to the big house they could see in the distance.

When they got there, a young, unsmiling black woman and a gangling beanpole of a boy came out of the house. It was choreographed, the way they pushed aside the doors and revealed a long wooden table ready to receive Vasquez. So was the way that the others had been following them.

Once he was sure the woman really meant to doctor Vasquez, Goodnight withdrew to the yard and settled near a water barrel, squatting down behind a shock of grass. Not one of the women had so much as let their eyes widen, but he was, after all, brought up a certain way and his lack of clothing was causing him discomfort. Still, he thought, the position seemed considerably more natural than it really should, what with his knees and back.

Then again, that did seem to have resolved itself. “Billy, do you mind telling me if I still have my grey?” Goodnight asked as the other man came over.

Billy pulled up sharply, staring at him in a way that Goodnight had to go back to the first few months of their acquaintance to recall. It was like Goodnight was just as much of a zoo exhibit for his attempts at non-business conversation as Billy was for how he looked in a world of white men.

“I know I left, but I thought we’d cleared that up,” Goodnight said, suddenly and irrationally frustrated. “I’ll admit, we’ve hardly had the time to determine if resurrection’s affected my head or just my body, but—”

“It’s affected your head,” Billy said.

Goodnight stared at him. Probably looked a fool, mouth gaping like that, but he genuinely felt like one. 

Billy’s mouth twisted, and then he abruptly twisted away. He kept digging his knuckles against his hips and then dragging them up and down. Then, when he realized what Goodnight was looking at, he jerked his arms up and around as if—he put them back down, but not before he'd caught himself across the ribs, where he’d gone to tuck his hands under his arms. The clawed tips left scratches that closed up before the dribble of blood from them had even rolled to his waist.

“Don’t you have them?” Billy said, half a challenge, half an accusation.

Goodnight raised his hands and thought about it, and the claws appeared. He started to show Billy, only to be left gaping again as Billy stalked off across the yard. The rest of Erica’s…pack…had emerged and she was assigning one of them to Sam’s horse, another to manage a vocally-critical Faraday away from the still-open kitchen doors. As Billy approached, Erica told a third to show him where the water was. Billy paused and he and the man—who had Horne’s bulk and Vasquez’s height—sized each other up. 

And then Billy allowed himself to be led away. Goodnight was still considering it when Sam came up to him, holding a loaf of bread.

“They’re laying out a meal in the barn. Since they need the kitchen for Vasquez,” Sam said after a moment. “Faraday’s even there.”

“Conscious?” Goodnight asked absently.

Sam snorted. Then Goodnight looked at him, and his face was tightening up as if he regretted the humor.

“Miss Reyes says she’ll put us up till Vasquez is back on his feet. They’re doing some—something, says it’ll speed it up,” Sam said, in a quiet, dead voice. “Guess you could call it magic. I don’t know now, I…anyway, she says two days. Whoever sent that thing is still going to be coming after me.”

“I expect she had something to say about that?” Goodnight asked.

Sam pressed his lips together. “She and Chris and his wife want to talk about it later. She was saying…if they came up, that wasn’t what worried her, that she could deal with _that_. Would want that, actually—said she’d at least know somebody put them down right, if she did it.”

“Well, I suppose there’s some truth to that,” Goodnight said. He could hear them in the barn. Faraday was playing at good-humored, but he had an edge to it and he was swiping that edge freely around. None of the others in there seemed to mind him much, which Goodnight could tell was raising his ire. Billy wasn’t participating in the conversation, but he was eating and drinking as if it was any other night. He rattled a plate and Faraday protested, which meant he was even seated with them. “Sam, did I do something foolish? I mean, besides running off like a coward?”

For a second Sam looked at Goodnight, calm and smooth and reading every little crease and frayed thread in Goodnight’s charm. His mouth opened, as if to say something, but he didn’t speak. He—Goodnight huffed out his nose, blinking, and Sam coughed. Then again, and then suddenly, the man was doubling over, slumping his hip against the barrel for support, and laughing as if the hounds of war were dragging it out of him.

Goodnight put his hand up, but didn’t touch Sam till the bout of laughing started to slide him off the barrel. He grabbed Sam’s elbow and Sam jerked from him. Then twisted more smoothly away, straightening up.

“Hell, Goodnight, I raised you and those two from the dead, if you want to talk about being foolish,” Sam said hoarsely.

Not just due to the laughing, and whatever Goodnight was smelling—he didn’t really know if he should call it a scent, because it wasn’t like a perfume. It was just…this tickle in his nose, and then his mind thought _anger-grief-bitter_.

“I don’t know that I’d call that foolish,” Goodnight said. He tried to keep his voice level. “I’ve got a personal interest, of course.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I didn’t mean—I didn’t want you dead. Would’ve taken you alive—you took the shot.” Sam glanced at him, sober, saying just enough to squeeze Goodnight’s ribs down on his heart and lungs, and for a moment Goodnight had his friend. Then he looked away, over at the barn. “Doesn’t matter what happened before that, what matters is you took it.”

They’d agreed a long time ago to disagree on that one, but given the upset just now, Goodnight thought a moment was merited. “What were you trying to do, Sam? And don’t just tell me what you were telling the rest of them. I heard you, and you said Mrs. Cullen killed Bogue. Not you.”

“She did. I wasn’t trying to bring _him_ back either,” Sam said, with just enough of a twist in his voice to make Goodnight raise a brow. “Oh…”

“That the foolishness, why she ended up taking him?” Goodnight asked.

Sam’s grimace was enough of an answer. And then it wasn’t, as he sighed and went on. “You know I was just waiting till he died. I didn’t…I didn’t say I had to be the one to kill him.”

“No, I don’t remember you ever saying that,” Goodnight agreed. He paused, then eased up onto his feet. He wanted to look the man in the eye, and at this point it was just them in the yard.

As he rose, Sam’s eyes ran down him. “You’re taking to this pretty quick.”

“You know, I hadn’t even noticed,” Goodnight said, waving one hand at his legs that had just…recreated themselves. Now that he was thinking about it, he _could_ feel it: like barely-warm water rolling over the skin, the way his body could now move from form to form. If this was how easy it was, he did have to wonder why all of his nurse’s stories had ended in tragedy. He would have thought at least one rougarou would’ve seen the paradise in turning a new skin whenever they felt like it. “Your old colleague made it sound as if we’d need to take lessons in it.”

“Should probably ask about that,” Sam said. “Faraday and Billy don’t seem to be managing so well.”

Billy would hate that, not knowing how to control himself. It was why he preferred opium over alcohol, when he indulged; opium just numbed him, while alcohol made him thick, he’d said once. No wonder, and now Goodnight would have to wait a while for the man to come back in the right mood.

Well, maybe he could blame it on his resurrection. “I do remember you saying the other, that you’d wait on his death,” he said, because if he couldn’t deal with the one, he might as well with the other. “I assumed you were being metaphorical. Your family—don’t push me off, Sam, I may try to keep the manners my dearly-departed mother cherished but I sat at their table. I ate with them, and I _admit_ they let me. When they died, I—”

“I said that and I meant it,” Sam bit off. His foot banged against the barrel, rocking it, but after a second he decided to stay. “You did know them. You knew—I got through the War and I got my acres and a mule, and I _found_ them. I found them, I found them, and we all had the farm, and we were going to live and die in freedom, and—and—”

He was silent for a while. Uncomfortably long, but Goodnight did not, he’d also admit, have the right to interrupt it. He gave Goodnight a few looks, as if hoping Goodnight would walk away, but perhaps death had cured Goodnight of that yellow streak, too.

“I meant it,” Sam finally said, low and very, very tired. He closed his eyes. “Just waiting for it. Warrants and bounties just passed the time. You know how.”

“I do, unfortunately,” Goodnight said. He hesitated, then cleared his throat. “When I found you—after they’d strung you up, you said the rope had snapped. And I wasn’t that far behind—I saw them riding away when I came up. It wasn’t even that long, Sam. Minutes, that’s what I remember.”

“Yeah, well, long enough if you’re the devil,” Sam muttered.

“The devil?”

Sam grimaced. “Well, I figured, at the time. Man comes up to you when you’re dying, offers you what you want the most in the world, and—hell if I know now.”

“Something else to ask about,” Goodnight said.

“You should go eat something,” Sam said, without looking at him. “You’re back alive, Goodnight. That’s something to celebrate. Come on.”

Sam started to walk away. Still not looking at Goodnight, but the man had that way of—pulling you along. Goodnight took a step before he realized, and then…it wasn’t settled, but then, if he was alive, he had time. And he had something he wanted to try.

Like water, he thought a moment later, padding up to Sam’s side on all fours. Sam twitched a little, almost said something, but then set his shoulders and pretended like this was always the way they traveled. 

That was something Goodnight remembered about the man. Pretending like it didn’t mean anything, the tattered gray coat on Goodnight’s back as he faltered in the doorway of Sam’s family’s kitchen. Goodnight had never thought much on it—hadn’t been looking to think about anything, just to find something else in the world to answer the ghostly cries in his ears every night, since he didn’t have the words. Sam had had a lot to say about those, at the beginning of their acquaintance, and selfish as he was, selfish as the War hadn’t managed to burn out of him, Goodnight had let it fill up the silences.

It was quiet again. Funny what dying could do, Goodnight thought, and as they came into the barn, he kept on thinking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW justifies packs partly because the sudden upgrade in senses causes sensory overload in newly-transformed werewolves, so the alpha who turned a werewolf generally goes and collects the beta and helps them learn how to cope. There's also (although they weren't particularly consistent about it) the idea that an alpha and the werewolves turned by that alpha have some sort of mental connection that draws them together.
> 
> Goodnight could have known the age of Sam's sister without meeting her, but the quiet way that conversation between him and Sam comes out, he seems to empathize with more than just a straight need for vengeance. I think you could read it as not questioning the vengeance, just questioning Sam's emotional stability for carrying it out, and if that's the case, it supports a reading that he knew Sam's family better than just facts of Sam's background.


	6. Vasquez

This time when Alejandro woke up, the scenery was a lot prettier. 

“Enjoy it, cowboy, you’re not going to see better in twenty miles of this place,” muttered the full-breasted blonde shimmying into a shift by the bed he was lying on. She wasn’t even bothering with a corset, just had laces up the sides that she pulled tight and knotted. “Also, the way your friends are going, you’re going to be spending a lot of time staring at dead bodies instead.”

She was speaking Spanish with the flavor of someone who’d spent time around the Mexican military, which didn’t rank much higher than the Texas Rangers in Alejandro’s experience. He eased himself up on his arm, grunting—everything still hurt but he didn’t feel so much as if his insides were falling out—and looked around the room. He was in a house and he couldn’t see his guns, or any of his guns. Or his pants.

There was a window a few feet away, wide-open so he could see it was evening, with dirt smeared on the sill as if someone had been rubbing it in with their hands. Then the door opened and Alejandro jerked into the corner of the bed, twisting onto his side as much as he could; he couldn’t jam himself under the bed, it wouldn’t move away from the wall, but he could narrow the angle.

The woman who stood in the doorway didn’t have a gun, but somehow she gave off the air of being perfectly capable of striking him dead anyway. Maybe it was the way she looked like she could have been Chisolm’s daughter. “Alpha,” she said, her tone stiff and formal. “The mayor’s sent—”

“I know, I know, I smelled his horse,” said the blonde woman, switching to English too. “They’re all out of the way, right?”

“Mostly,” the other woman said. The blonde eyed her and she grimaced. “I’d ask if we can do something about Faraday yet, but you already told me.”

“Don’t blame me, blame Lydia,” the blonde said, shrugging. “Well, look, I’ve got to clean up and then I’ll be down. Entertain him?”

The second woman did not look pleased at the request, but she nodded and withdrew. The blonde one sighed and shook out her hair, then turned to a chest pushed up against the wall. She opened out and pulled out a fine silk dress. “My name is Erica Reyes, and I own this ranch, as well as three saloons in town and most of a hotel,” she said, going back to Spanish as she shook out the dress. “I’ve been putting you and your friends up while they try to figure out whether they want to die or not.”

“Doesn’t sound like my friends,” Alejandro said.

“Well, that’s not going to sit well with Faraday. He’s been in my ear all day long, telling me about how you damn well can’t die before he tells you who won,” Erica said. She tossed the dress over her head and pulled it down, then started doing up the buttons in the back. “Something about a running count you two had?”

Alejandro snorted. It wasn’t because he was just staring at the woman, pretty as her breasts were. She gave him the same feeling as the other one, just…quieter. A little like Billy, when he was keeping his coat over his knives. “That one, yes, that sounds right. Maybe one friend, then.”

Erica glanced at him. She was sizing up something about him, and he wasn’t as vain as Faraday; he didn’t think it had anything to do with his body. She looked him right in the eye and for a second he had the uncomfortable feeling that she…knew him, and not from a poster, or a story in a bar. “You ever come down to Guadalajara?” he asked.

That earned him a full-throated laugh. She was still looking at him, so he could see her mouth and see all the teeth in it, and see how some of them were sharp and long. “Maybe my daddy, whoever he was,” Erica said. “Look, my healer did what she could, but you should stay off a horse for a couple more days, unless you want to be pissing blood till you die. Your friends don’t seem to learn too fast either, so you’re going to have to watch that yourself.”

Then she turned away, her hands in her hair as she twisted it up. She walked out the door and he could hear her dress rustling its way down the hall. Couldn’t hear her feet, he realized after a moment. She’d been barefoot.

He waited till he couldn’t hear her dress at all before he started moving. This was usually a storeroom, he thought, looking around at the boxes and barrels and chests. He poked at a few, but they were all locked, except…he was reaching for the chest Erica had taken her dress from when some noise made him look up.

A second later, Alejandro had thrown himself back on the far end of the bed, wrapping his hand around the cross-bar that made up the footboard. A sharp, twisting pain lanced across his torso as he tried to break the wood off, causing him to slip off and fall to his knees on the floor. He was gasping there, pressing one arm against his ribs, when a large red wolf sailed through the window and landed on the floor.

It was graceful enough at first, but as it collected itself, one of its back legs abruptly wrenched about—the middle of it completely reversed its bend. Alejandro sucked his breath, startled, and the wolf’s head started to go up, then yanked down almost to crack against the floor. The wolf jerked all over, and then Faraday was sprawled out against the floorboards, making pained noises.

“Goddamn it, why the hell I can’t…oh, stop laughing, you have no idea how complicated this is,” Faraday said, pushing himself up.

“Do I look like I’m laughing?” Alejandro said.

Faraday started to answer, then got his head properly up. He fell silent, looking at Alejandro. Then, more carefully, he drew his legs under him so that he was squatting. If he wanted to, he could stand up and be almost right where he needed to be to just lean back out the window.

“Don’t tell me you don’t remem—” he started again, vicious and low, like Alejandro had shot his horse.

“I just got up, I don’t even know where this is,” Alejandro snapped. “You tell me what I’m supposed to remember, when I wasn’t even awake.”

“Well, I suppose we could start at, I blew myself up,” Faraday said after a long silence.

Trying to be funny, when he still was looking at Alejandro as if Alejandro had shot his horse. Back when Alejandro had considered shooting the man, he hadn’t thought he’d felt as strongly about it as he did now, watching the muscle in Faraday’s jaw tic. “I remember _that_. Also that you and Goodnight and Billy were wolves, and someone was following us, and then someone got married.”

“What? Nobody got—oh, _her_ ,” Faraday said, rolling his eyes. He relaxed and shifted away from the window. Then he shrugged and got to his feet. “She’s worse than this ‘alpha’ who runs this place, if you and I mean the same screaming redhead. And I do mean that in the least pleasant way possible.”

He went by Alejandro and squatted down to reach under the bed, then pulled out a dusty set of clothes. The pants, he kept, while the shirt he tossed mostly into Alejandro’s face. On purpose, Alejandro thought, watching the way Faraday smirked and sneered and kept one eye on the window.

“She’s married to this old compadre of Chisolm’s—wait, Billy said you knew that part,” Faraday went on. “The two of them live up near Shasta Springs, but Argent likes to keep his guns oiled or something, and every so often he goes out huntin’ him some bounties. She goes along, mostly so she can break everyone’s ears with that scream of hers.”

“I remember a scream. It knocked out that—” Alejandro couldn’t quite remember the word in English and moved his hand in a flowing motion, then tapped his fingers together to indicate a mouth.

Faraday looked more at the window, then turned on Alejandro. “How much, exactly, do you remember? Or am I asking the wrong question? Because I thought when Chisolm roped you into this, you were just some _vaquero_ who didn’t know to run the right way to the border.”

He seemed more accusing than anything, with a wounded edge like Alejandro had lied to him, and had had a reason to not lie to him. But there was something else, something uneasy in the way that Faraday kept shifting on his feet, and with Alejandro on the floor and trying to wrestle the shirt over still-stiff arms.

“You’re insulting me very much for someone who would like to know if I knew things before this,” Alejandro said, once he’d gotten his head through the right damn hole. He watched Faraday’s smirk turn brittle, then snorted. “I knew nothing. Why would I know anything about wolves?”

Faraday had wanted to believe the first thing Alejandro had said, and he was sharp because of it. “Chisolm said he found you keeping company with a dead man up in the mountains.”

“Well, because I have five hundred dollars for my head, _guero_ ,” Alejandro sighed. Suddenly he was tired. His arm dropped as if it was filled with lead, and even though, when he clasped it, he could feel only a tender scar through the sleeve, he did not think it would stand up to much. “If I knew what he knew, do you think I would have followed him to that town?”

“Fair question,” Faraday said, face suddenly clearing. Or at least it seemed to, but he turned at the same time and looked down so Alejandro couldn’t see his eyes. He rolled onto one knee, tugging the pants on the rest of the way. “So you just don’t know any better, following around men who can raise the dead and all that? I thought you Mexicans were all dyed-in-the-wool Catholics. You seemed happy when we got the church back up, I saw you. Because if you’re planning to take up the, what’s it called, the Spanish Inquisition—”

And Alejandro could use a drink, and some food. “No idea what that is, _guero_ ,” he muttered, getting to his feet.

He was a little unsteady, but his limbs all went where he wanted them to, and from the window he could tell he was on the first floor of the house. Some of the barrels had flour streaks on them so he figured he couldn’t be too far from the kitchen. He poked his head out of the room, and then, when nobody stopped him, eased down the hall in the opposite way that he’d seen Erica go.

“I know what that means now. People around here speak Mexican,” Faraday said to Alejandro’s back as the other man followed him out of the room. “Not that I needed much of a translation, with the way you were always—”

The hallway was short, and then there was the kitchen, with someone’s recently-made cornbread steaming near the fireplace. The sudden, rich, buttery smell of it made Alejandro duck as if those aromas had come winging at him like one of Billy’s knives, and then his weight rolled his foot. He cursed, twisting so his back would thump the doorway, and grabbed at Faraday’s arm. Yanked himself back up to where he could get a good hold of the jamb, and then…watched, blinking, as Faraday hissed and retreated rapidly into the other corner of the kitchen, arms clutched around himself, staring at Alejandro with wide eyes.

Until he tripped over a pot and went ass-over-head with a clatter, coming down in a flurry of floating scraps and fur. The wolf resumed staring up at Alejandro, clearly angrier. Alejandro shrugged, because he didn’t know how to teach a wolf to walk, and then made his way to the cornbread.

“Is everyone dealing with this mayor?” Alejandro asked around a mouthful, as Faraday, human again, pants split in places, loitered up to the table Alejandro was using. “Do they pay him?”

Faraday snickered. “Far as I can tell, they tell him when he should stay home and he stays home. He’s just nervous because they haven’t told him yet.”

“Useful,” Alejandro said, swallowing. “This Erica has a very good idea.”

“Yeah, you’d think so,” Faraday said. He made it halfway between a comment and an accusation, and from the way he was drumming his fingers on the table, choosing between them wasn’t his real concern. Then he saw where Alejandro was looking and curled away his fingers.

They had been showing claws, and Alejandro had been interested, because they were still fingers. It wasn’t as if the man’s fingertips turned into wolf’s paws. But there were two other…Alejandro paused. “Billy and Goodnight?”

Faraday just frowned at him.

Somehow, Alejandro didn’t think the other two would be gone, with Faraday so full of nervous anger instead of spite. And the cornbread was really very good. He could look after he ate.

“You eat like a starving dog,” Faraday suddenly said, his lip curling. He started to bring his hand down against the table as if to slap it and move away, then caught himself. Awkwardly, some wood flicking away from the edge where his claws nicked it. He grimaced at that, then his hand, and then looked even more annoyed when his fingernails showed round, if chipped. Then his head came back up and he stared at Alejandro again. “Are you just going to eat that?”

“I’m hungry,” Alejandro pointed out. He was starting to feel his back teeth lock in between bites, irritating as Faraday was being. “So I am going to eat, because there is food, and if you want to help yourself, then help yourself. Or you want me to put a bowl on the floor for you?”

For some reason this lightened Faraday’s mood. “Now, there’s no reason to be rude, _amigo_ , just because I’ve got some fine new talents and you don’t.”

“Yes, yes, the lady here will like your way of tearing her clothes,” Alejandro said. He finished off the fingerful of bread he had, then flicked his nail at one of the scraps scattered on the table. “Very good lover, she will think.” 

That set Faraday back to staring at him, and it was starting to really work on Alejandro, not just annoy him. Survived a battle with a Gatling gun, survived a _dragon_ —survived that time in the mountains when he thought he’d have to talk to trees forever, and now this.

“You know, I could kill you,” Faraday said abruptly. Not a threat, his voice too frayed around the edges, though he was looking hard enough at Alejandro. “This… _were_ wolf idea, as they call it, it comes with a lot of—Goodnight came up on me the other day and I damn near threw an entire pig at him. And it was still squealing, mind.”

“So they have bacon?” Alejandro said, looking up and around.

Faraday made a tight, disbelieving noise. They looked at each other again. “Are you serious?” he asked Alejandro.

“I’m _hungry_. Got shot, went after Sam, he doesn’t say _anything_ and Red Harvest keeps—you know he speaks Spanish?” Alejandro said. Then, when Faraday didn’t respond, he straightened up. “Wait, he—”

“Oh, he’s here, somewhere. He does?” Faraday said, almost absently. Then he grimaced and shook himself. He eyed Alejandro, his body turned as if to go, and then, like someone had a gun to his head, he came up to the other side of the table. “I could kill you.”

Alejandro rolled his eyes. “You didn’t kill me when you had your guns, _guero_. Just talking, like always. You as a wolf, you were most scary when you said nothing. You know?”

Faraday started to respond, then stopped, his mouth still half-open. He breathed through it, letting Alejandro eat. His feet shifted against the floor. Then he blew out a breath and turned around. He was muttering to himself, but not so viciously, and so Alejandro looked up and watched as Faraday rustled up a couple mugs of stale-looking coffee, then a jug of what turned out to be full of that pounded meat the tribes sold to trappers.

“And where the hell are my guns anyway?” Faraday said. He looked at Alejandro, then pushed one mug and the jug over. “Jack?”

“Gave Jack to Teddy Q,” Alejandro said. Waited for the cursing, and then picked up the coffee. “Your guns, Chisolm brought those. He should have them. I showed them to you.”

“You did,” Faraday said. His tone was a little odd, but when Alejandro raised a brow, he didn’t change his expression. He was serious, and not also angry, which was not common with him. “You knew I was that wolf.”

“It wasn’t that hard,” Alejandro said, a little laugh sneaking into it. Which choked him on the coffee. He had to cough into his hand before it cleared up, and then he looked up from wiping his mouth and Faraday was still serious. “Yeah. Wolves, men, either they think I’m better dead or they don’t. I don’t see a difference. Maybe God knows, but I don’t talk to him, you know? And maybe that is better, not talking. I build him his church back, maybe he leaves me alone till I die, whenever that is.”

Faraday let Alejandro eat and drink. Alejandro did offer him the jug and Faraday’s face…his nostrils flared and something happened to his eyes, before he dropped his head and shoved his fists against the table like he was going to get up. He sucked his breath, held it till even Alejandro thought about shaking him, and then blew it out.

“So you ever going to finish eating?” Faraday finally said. “You might remember a lot, but you also missed a lot.”

“Like what?” Alejandro said, and kept eating. Faraday wasn’t leaving now, he could see that.

The man wanted to—wanted to think like he wanted to. His face didn’t hide much for a gambler. Eventually he sighed, and kicked the table leg, right as Alejandro was going to pick up the coffee again. “Fine, I’ll fill you in. Lazy Mexican ass.”

“Many thanks, _guero_ ,” Alejandro snorted.

* * *

They’d been at the Reyes ranch for two and a half days while Alejandro was sleeping off whatever Reyes’ healer, the second woman who’d come in, had done to him. Erica Reyes didn’t own the largest ranch in the area, but she owned the land with the best watering holes and she and her pack controlled which cattle drives were allowed to stop at them. The area was light on lumber and mining and anything else that could compete with her for money, so she didn’t have to work that hard to keep the others in line.

“Most of them think it’s just that, money.” Faraday shrugged off Alejandro’s incredulous look. “You want to say something about her women, go ahead. I’ll just stand here with a bucket for all the blood after she tears you apart.”

“Ah, I see, you are returning the favor someone else did for you,” Alejandro said, grinning as Faraday shot him an annoyed look. “You heal fast now without help, I remember that too. So was it Billy? No, he would just like to compare his knives, and I think the women would like him. Goodnight, eh?”

Goodnight, said the way Faraday shifted before he went back to catching Alejandro up. Reyes was an ‘alpha,’ which meant she was in charge of all the local werewolves. There were at least five besides her, but she had more people living and working at the ranch than that, and he thought some others might have temporarily relocated to the outside to watch them.

“You get this feeling crawling over your skin,” Faraday said. He stopped and looked at the corner, hunching up his shoulders against whatever he was thinking of. “Like someone whistling at your back, except you don’t hear anything. And it’s cold even when the sun is right on top of you.”

“You sure those are the werewolves,” Alejandro said, grimacing, as he remembered _that_.

Faraday glanced at him, then abruptly sat up on his chair. He reached for the jar of pounded meat and banged a spoon around in it, and when Alejandro started to tell him to stop, the other man raised his other hand. Caught Alejandro’s eye and looked up, then towards the left. Then he started telling a long, very stupid story about this Lydia who was married to Chisolm’s old bounty partner, and how he’d heard of her before she’d married him when she was a gambler like himself, except she worked the stagecoach lines because there were plenty of men who were stupid enough to pity her for a widow with no other way except to take up cards just to keep herself out of the brothels.

“So she worked less than you and made more,” Alejandro said.

“I haven’t even gotten to the—” Faraday stopped, looking to the left again, and then made a face. He looked at Alejandro and tapped his ear. “Can hear better now. So can they.”

“Reyes’ people?” Alejandro asked.

Faraday started to nod, but a little slow. He saw that Alejandro noticed and raised his hand again. Hesitated, then shrugged, but reluctant. “Billy and Goodnight too, and sometimes I wonder about Red Harvest. Ain’t a werewolf, I don’t think he’d be nagging at Chisolm so much if he was, but…Goodnight’s been after Chisolm left and right since we…figured out this whole turn back to a man trick. So has Argent and Reyes, if I’ve been hearing right.”

“About what? Bringing you and them back?” Alejandro said, sitting up. “Are they—is this what they think is wrong? You should not have come back?”

“Oh, hell, no. Not with Goodnight, anyway—honestly, I think coming back from the dead’s improved him. You’ve never seen a man so interested in making arrangements for proper living—he found out Reyes has a barber and a tailor working at her hotel and wanted to meet them both _immediately_ ,” Faraday snickered. He looked as if he’d helped himself to some of that, with his clean-shaven cheeks. Then he sobered, fiddling with the spoon in the jar. “No, it’s about…Chisolm wasn’t trying to do that, he was trying to do something else. And if I understand right, he was trying to conclude a deal he made some years ago, only it seems he misunderstood the terms. Specifically, the manner of collection.”

Chisolm had told everyone the story at this point, according to Faraday. At least, the bones of it, and there was a new part Alejandro hadn’t heard yet: when Chisolm had found himself back alive, he’d found a wolf’s paw lying next to him, which he’d kept till it’d mostly rotted and only the claws had been left. Those had been what he’d put in the coffins at Rose Creek, thinking it was just a signal to whoever had made him that bargain that the time was up.

“Argent and Reyes are both insisting that this has nothing to do with us coming back from the dead. Apparently this is some kind of known trick werewolves have about their claws,” Faraday said. Every few seconds he kept checking on something, and each time, he got less…he stopped looking over and just would cock his head, like a wolf. “But what’s been following us since then, _that_ is what they say doesn’t have anything to do with raising the dead. Argent says his wife would know—she’s not a werewolf either. I’m not sure what she is, but she speaks with authority when it comes to the restless dead, according to him.”

“So this man Chisolm made the deal with, he wants to get paid,” Alejandro said. “In what?”

There was an obvious answer, and from the way Faraday’s jaw tightened, he was thinking about it too. “He says he can’t remember,” Faraday said after a long second. “Chisolm, I mean. He says he can’t remember who it was he talked to, or what they talked about, aside from Bogue dying, and in all these years, he hasn’t bothered to find out.”

“You believe that?” Alejandro said.

“What kind of question is that?” Faraday said, suddenly snappish. He shoved the jar away from him and huffed back in his chair, glaring at Alejandro. “Believe? What the hell is there to believe here? We’ve got werewolves and dragons and women who can scream you out of the sky, when they’re not busy running around sweet-talking the stage lines into their personal transp—”

“He’s just sore because Chisolm and everyone don’t give a damn the great Joshua Faraday’s back in the world.” Billy stopped _after_ Alejandro had yelped and seized the edge of the cornbread pan. He looked at the two of them, then went on over to the water barrel. He was dressed, but in clothes that didn’t fit him—on purpose, with the way he pushed one sleeve up, then jerked it back down over an unusually-hairy arm as he dipped himself up some water. “They’re more worried about this black magic that’s got hold of Chisolm. Since seems like that’s actually still trying to kill him.”

Faraday hadn’t startled, but he also didn’t look pleased to see Billy. “I’m sore because Chisolm doesn’t seem to have a plan for dealing with what he’s stirred up beyond telling everybody he didn’t know what he was doing, and pretending like he ain’t listening whenever one of them starts to talk about what it might want when it catches up. If it finds him, it finds us, and credit me with some sense of preserving my own skin.”

Billy looked at him, then barely looked at Alejandro before they both lost control of themselves; Alejandro managed to keep it to a few snorts, but Billy laughed long enough he actually pulled up a seat. “You _blew yourself up_ ,” Billy said. He coughed, getting his breath back, and then gave Faraday a nod. “Good ride, though.”

For some reason, it’d caught Faraday off-guard and he’d just stared at them, mouth a little open, until Billy sat down. Then he shut his mouth and seemed to think it over. Didn’t seem to like doing it, but when he was done, he wasn’t sitting like someone had forced a ramrod down his spine.

“Hell of a better ride than either of you would’ve done,” Faraday muttered. He slouched back in his seat, rubbing at his knuckles. His claws were showing again. “Well, I didn’t _know_ at the time that _this_ was an option. If I’m drawing a hand and my cards are die in some farmer’s converted outhouse, die in some undistinguished little dusthole of a main street, die in a pile of other rag-tag soldiers of fortune or die being the first man to ever take out a Gatling gun with just a deck of cards and a—”

“You think about dying a lot,” Billy said, flat and pointed and not really to Faraday, or to Alejandro. “Maybe Goody should sit down with you.”

“If he’s switching up his partners,” Faraday said. “He does seem to think revivifying’s a reason to explore, doesn’t he?”

Billy looked at him. Then pushed back from the table and got up and walked out of the room. Faraday made a startled noise, then settled down, looking much less surprised.

“You think you can’t die anymore, _guero_?” Alejandro asked.

Only half-teasing. The rest was honest curiosity, and credit to Faraday, after the first irritated glance, he seemed to pick up on that. “Maybe I don’t catch you up on that part,” he said, his poker-playing smile on his face. He held Alejandro’s gaze for a second, then looked over at where Billy had gone. “I don’t even want to start on those two. It’ll ruin my belief in fairytale endings.”

“You care?” Alejandro asked.

Faraday glanced back at him. “Not really, it’s their business,” he said, surprising Alejandro with the honesty. “Aside from how, even _knowing_ I’d heal, watching Billy with those knives now when Goodnight’s trying to talk sense into Chisolm again and…Goodnight met Chisolm’s family. Before Bogue killed them. He was a regular at the kitchen table, apparently.”

That made sense of a lot of things, and made a lot more questions, if Alejandro was interested. It was a question just by itself, he thought, if he was, and why he was. Red Harvest had been right in saying he had nowhere else to go, but then, as he knew from the mountains, nowhere was a real choice. 

“You care?” Faraday said.

Alejandro looked up. The other man was staring right at him, but he got the sense it wasn’t just—hearing, he thought. And smell, the way that Faraday’s nostrils would twitch and then he’d half-curl his fingers to hide the tips. He should start remembering that. Thinking about it. And it was interesting that he did not think this would be the worst burden he had ever taken on.

“It was funny. He walked into the cabin and he had no guns. I could have shot him any time,” Alejandro said after a moment. “I think, at the time, this is a man…he thinks I will not shoot him in the back, because he thinks…even with my face on a poster, he thinks he will talk to me and I will talk back. I was up there months and no one talks to me. But now I know, this is because he does not think he can die till Bogue does.”

“Yeah, I’m wondering about when he told us all if we wanted to go, then we could go. You know, the night before,” Faraday said, nodding. “He bought Jack so I didn’t shoot a man. I don’t mind shooting a man, but it’s another town and most won’t save you the trouble. There is _always_ another town.”

“But then why ask someone to come with you at all?” Alejandro said. He tapped at the empty cornbread tin. “Why go to Rose Creek? Why not go to Sacramento, and sneak into Bogue’s mansion, and just shoot? If he doesn’t care if he lives after?”

Faraday thought on it, and then seemed to get fed up with thinking about it. “Maybe I should go get Goodnight for you,” he said, annoyed again. “All this wondering about what Chisolm’s thinking and hell, I didn’t know when I went with him in the first place. I just figured, I _do_ think this man means it when he says we’re going to do this, and I don’t think we can but if he says so, and does it…shame not to see it.”

“Sounds like you want him to just tell you, let’s find this man who made this deal and kill him,” Alejandro said. “Somebody who raises the dead? Just kill them?”

“Well, it’d be better than sitting around. Besides, what did you want to do? Sit around and wait for them to come to us?” Faraday snapped.

“I think I am not hungry, now, and not thirsty, and now I know Goodnight is a man again and can talk. I think I’m going to find him,” Alejandro said, as he got up from the table.

Faraday narrowed his eyes at him, then pushed his chair back but didn’t get up. “Oh, what, are you saying I didn’t tell you everything? After I sat down, out of the goodness of my heart, and spent the last, what, hour catching you up on everything I know?”

“No, I am not saying that, _guero_. You did tell me a lot. So _gracias_ ,” Alejandro said. “I’m just saying I think I want to talk to Goodnight more than I want to sit around.”

Two seconds, no more than that, and Faraday was up on his feet and at Alejandro’s heels, complaining about what that meant and if Alejandro was calling him a liar, and maybe death had changed things because he remembered Alejandro being a _lot_ less of an ungrateful son of a bitch before death had intervened, so some American saying Alejandro didn’t even understand. Saved Alejandro the trouble of actually searching for Goodnight, what with how Faraday insisted on pointing out the way with his barbed comments. 

More frightening as a wolf, when he didn’t talk, Alejandro remembered, and grinned as Faraday went on and on. Not likely he’d see that again, at least.

* * *

Goodnight, much to Alejandro’s surprise, really did seem to be enjoying himself as a werewolf. “Oh, I’ll admit, there are some kinks to be worked out, not the least that a gentleman shouldn’t be forced to choose between his decency and his freedom of movement, but on the whole I appreciate not being six feet down with half a pound of lead in my ribs,” he said, buttoning up his vest. “And the birdsong in the morning is downright wonderful with this keen a sense of hearing.”

His clothes seemed borrowed as well, but unlike with Billy and Faraday—who had had a fresh pair of pants flung at them as they’d walked the grounds—he’d clearly picked them to try and suit his frame. He looked…not younger, Alejandro decided after a moment. The white was still in his hair and beard, and the creases around his eyes and mouth were still there. But he wasn’t as wound up as the other two, seemed to fit his skin.

“You must have been listening to a chicken on some other mountain than I was, in that case,” Faraday, who’d taken up a position at the barn doorway, muttered. He kept folding and unfolding his arms, trying not to show something was agitating him, and once Alejandro caught him sniffing. “That thing doesn’t show up on the dinner table tonight, I might just set a dawn meeting with it.”

Red Harvest stepped out of one of the stalls, paused, and then swung the door the rest of the way open so that Alejandro could see the gutted deer strung up in it. Faraday made a rumbling noise that sent shivers up Alejandro’s back, but when Alejandro looked over, the other man was ducking out of the barn with a curse. A second later, Alejandro glimpsed Faraday several yards away, loitering about where Billy was watching them. His trousers looked a little more ragged at the seams.

“Not chicken,” Red Harvest informed them.

He walked further into the barn and at that point, the two wolves with him became visible. One was noticeably bigger than the other, and when it shook itself onto two feet and walked into an adjoining stall—manlike arms under the fur, wolf’s muzzle topping them—it was at least an inch taller than Alejandro. It came back out with a packet of clothes under one arm, and after it’d divided the garments up between itself and the second wolf, who also had risen onto two legs, they both shook themselves fully human.

“Thanks for the outing, Boyd,” Goodnight told the one that’d went into the stall. “Let me just tidy up and we’ll be along directly.”

“Good shooting,” Boyd said, nodding, and then he and the other man headed for the house.

“You shoot better now?” Alejandro wondered.

Goodnight’s fingers faltered on the last button. Out in the yard, Billy pricked alert—he didn’t _move_ like a man, too fast, and then he grimaced, seeing Alejandro staring at him. He deliberately eased back against a fence and stared away.

“It’s interesting,” Goodnight said after a moment. He finished with his vest and then put his arms out in front of him, giving them a shake. “I do have better sight, and even in the days of my foolish youth, I don’t think my fingers had this kind of speed. But the sound of the shot does catch you—I’d gotten used to it, I thought, but it’s like the roar of God’s wrath all over again. And I find the smell not so appealing either. I never did, but…I don’t think you woke up to hear me ramble on, did you?”

Alejandro offered him a smile, which Goodnight returned with warmth but without softening the way he was regarding Alejandro. This was the difference, too—the way he could look _at_ someone. The man at Rose Creek, he’d been a little like Faraday, charming but with the sense that he’d slip away if he could. This man, this one, Alejandro could believe that an army had considered him the Angel of Death.

“You were waiting on me. Now you don’t have to wait,” Alejandro said.

Goodnight’s smile tightened. He looked over past Alejandro’s shoulder, then back. “Sam’s sitting with Chris and one of Miss Reyes’ pack members, seeing if we can learn more about this deal he struck. I don’t know much more than folktales, I’m afraid, but it appears more intelligent souls than me have been studying this for centuries.”

Red Harvest snorted. Then refused to say anything, even though Goodnight gave him a good handful of seconds. 

“They think it’s a good idea for us to stay around?” Alejandro said, looking up at the barn. Good thick rafters—in this treeless region, that would cost money to bring in. “I met her, the lady of the place. She does not seem stupid.”

“Oh, no, Miss Reyes is anything but a fool. And battle-hardened, I’m told—she challenged the last leader over certain grievances and came out on top, and by this, it appears, werewolves mean she killed the old alpha with her own hands,” Goodnight said, running a hand through his hair. He fussed with the strands by his ears, then gave his goatee a few brushes, pulling out bits of dust. “She thinks it’s a demon. Not the Devil, it appears he doesn’t concern himself with us lowly mortals nearly as much as the good Church would have you believe, but some lesser denizen of Hell.”

“She doesn’t want us leaving till she’s sure. If we tangle with it and we don’t get rid of it, she’s worried it’ll come back and attack her,” Billy added. He and Faraday had come closer to the barn, though they were still well outside. “This happens often enough that they tell stories about it.”

Alejandro took that in. “She can’t tell us how to do it and then we can do it?”

“Doesn’t trust us. She’s right. We aren’t going to do it,” Red Harvest suddenly decided to add.

Which Goodnight did not like, bridling up and glaring at Red Harvest in a way that Alejandro hadn’t seen since Faraday had goaded him in front of the farmers. “I think that’s premature,” he said sharply.

“Well, I don’t know how complicated this magic or whatever it is, but if it’ll get that damn itching off the back of my neck, I’ll learn it,” Faraday said. He either didn’t notice the tension between Goodnight and Red Harvest or didn’t care. “Considering that I’m pretty sure the other plan is to kill us and _then_ get rid of it.”

“We aren’t going to do it because _Chisolm_ has to,” Red Harvest said, staring at Goodnight.

“And if your idea is to kill him to make it stop, well, I thought Mrs. Martin explained very clearly that that _certainly_ will bring this demon down on us, the other people living here, and half the goddamn state,” Goodnight snapped. He took a step forward, his eyes—they were literally blazing, Alejandro realized, an eerie glow flickering in and out of them. He was not a heavily-built man but his sleeves were straining to contain his arms. “Is _that_ where your path leads?”

“You do not know what you are talking about,” Red Harvest snapped back. The eyes and the shifting play of muscles against Goodnight’s shirt-sleeves didn’t seem to throw him at all. He glowered right back, then abruptly turned and stalked through the barn and out the doors at the other end.

Goodnight exhaled very roughly. His eyes went back to normal. He breathed again, and the strain of his shirt over his arms and shoulders went away. 

“I thought she was _Argent’s_ wife,” Alejandro said.

They all three of them stared at him. Then Billy snorted, and took a sideways step so he could thump his shoulder against the barn door. “You should ask her about that.”

“ _Don’t_ ask her about that,” Faraday immediately said, with a wince. Then he flicked a look at Alejandro. “And don’t say I never did anything for you.”

Goodnight was still staring at the other end of the barn. When he finally looked at Alejandro, he was still visibly upset, but seemed in control of it. He also didn’t seem like he wanted to talk, so it startled Alejandro when the man took a step towards him and not the doorway.

“Let me deal with Sam,” he said. His face tensed up, not at Alejandro, at something else, though as far as Alejandro could tell, nobody else had come in or by the barn. Then he sucked his breath, determined, and went on. “Sam isn’t aiming to bring the demon down on anyone either. I think it’s…well, good God, we’re talking about _demons_. I’ll admit, I’ve had times I thought were hell on earth, but this is far beyond any of those.”

“You’ve _been_ dealing with him,” Billy suddenly said. He jerked off the jamb and his hand went to his hip—he wasn’t wearing any of his knives, except maybe for whatever was holding his hair off his neck. His fingers fidgeted with a loose fold of his shirt instead, till Alejandro heard a soft ripping noise and Billy pulled his clawed hand away. “Look, you’ve been talking at him since you got _up_ , Goody, and this Chris Argent, he says he knows Chisolm too and he _knows_ this—”

“He rode with Sam less than a year,” Goodnight said, rounding on Billy with a viciousness that left Alejandro raising his brows. Behind Billy, Faraday was wincing, not in play, and when he caught Alejandro’s eye, he gestured to swing wide around the other two men. “I’ve known Sam since—since the whole thing happened, damn it, even if I didn’t see it and I can’t just leave n—Billy, I _know_ him.”

“You think you owe him,” Billy snapped.

“Well, I _do_ , goddamn it,” Goodnight snapped back. “And I didn’t pay that one off by coming back.”

Billy’s eyes did the same thing that Goodnight’s had—same color too, when they had brown and blue eyes without it. Something—there was a noise, or something, even though Alejandro didn’t think he had heard anything. But it ran through him, making him jump and reach for a gun he didn’t have. Faraday too looked nervous, reddish fur edging up his arms and down his cheeks as he started to drop into a stance that wasn’t right for drawing a gun, but that still seemed aimed to act.

Then Billy pivoted on his heel and walked off, just like Red Harvest. Goodnight looked angry about that, but it was a different kind of anger, one where the first heat of it immediately drained out of the man, leaving him as pale as fresh ashes. He pressed his lips together, then rubbed his hand over his face, muttering to himself.

“We should see if they’re serving up dinner yet,” he finally said, still not looking at Alejandro. “Sam comes down for that, and Miss Reyes takes her hospitality seriously.”

“I could eat,” Alejandro agreed.

Goodnight did look over at that. He wasn’t fooling the man, but with the way things were…Goodnight took it with a nod, and then he followed Billy. Not pacing to overtake, Alejandro noted.

“Well, and that’s what it’s been like all day and all night,” Faraday said, coming up to Alejandro. “Glad you woke up?”

“Yes,” Alejandro said. Then grinned as the other man frowned at him. “This made you miss me, eh?”

“Missing you less with every word that comes out of your mouth,” Faraday said. Then wrinkled his nose as Alejandro replied with a lazy string of Spanish descriptions of his mother. “I _am_ asking the people around here what the hell you say to me.”

“Good, you should learn something, now that you’re not dead,” Alejandro said.

There didn’t seem to be anything else to do but start for dinner. Faraday joined him, not that he’d expected anything else. What was unexpected was that the other man was silent about it, almost until they’d reached the house. By then Alejandro could hear other people, and if he could hear, then…

Faraday spoke anyway. “You staying?”

“I think so,” Alejandro said with a shrug. “Why?”

“Well—an honest-to-God demon?” Faraday said.

That did make Alejandro stop for a second. But…even when he thought about it, it was the same. Maybe the mountains had driven him crazy, he thought idly. “If it is a demon, if demons are real, then can I leave? And if I can’t leave, then I might as well stay. This is interesting, and I have nothing else to do.”

“You,” Faraday started to say, with heat in it, and then the other man abruptly broke away, loping into the house ahead of Alejandro. “Crazy Mexican bastard.”

Alejandro paused a second time, then shook his head. Went in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Erica doesn't wear a corset because those are pretty hellish if you're trying to change into a werewolf. In TW, clothes don't shift with the person. Also, there's an in-between stage between human and wolf where the werewolf is upright on two legs but will shift their facial features, fingertips and toes (and depending on the individual, gets really, really ripped under additional fur).
> 
> TW werewolves have color-coded glowing eyes. All werewolves start out with amber glow, and when they kill "an innocent" (this really just seems to mean kill anyone), their eyes turn blue. Alphas have red eyes.


	7. Chisholm

Sam did come to dinner. Reyes and the rest of her pack had been more than generous to a group of strangers with trouble at their backs, even if she made no secret that in the end, it was rooted in self-interest. He figured he owed them, and the men he’d brought to her, to let them know in person.

Though Goodnight wasn’t making it easy. “I need to talk to you after this,” the man muttered, as he politely slid his hip between Sam and the chair at the end of the table nearest the door. 

He stood there till Sam finally moved one seat over, putting him next to a bemused Vasquez. Billy took a seat a few places down, with two of Reyes’ people between him and Goodnight, and for a moment Goodnight was distracted, watching Billy with a mixture of disappointment and frustration. Then he breathed in and turned back to Sam.

“We’re all going to talk about it,” Sam said. “After dinner, like we do every night.”

Goodnight started to answer, but then Reyes asked him how the hunt had gone and ever the gentleman, he wasn’t going to ignore her in favor of Sam. She knew what she was doing, and Sam also had gotten to know her well enough to not mistake that for doing him a favor. 

Chris was looking down the table at them too, and so was his wife. But when Sam looked back, Chris didn’t flinch. Just took the stare, long enough to acknowledge it, before turning to his wife and asking if she wanted any water. He’d been eyeing Sam during the last hour in the small library Reyes had, while his wife had been needling Sam. They both had more than an idea, but it seemed they weren’t going to do anything about it.

Which suited Sam. “Good to see you’re back up,” he said, as Vasquez’s elbow spraddled into his plate.

Vasquez, already dropped into his usual hunch over his food, paused and for a second he looked about to start something. Sam reached for the bread, holding back a grimace, and thankfully, Vasquez instead plowed his mouth into his beans.

“Joshua’s been catching him up,” Goodnight started in a conversational tone.

“Has he,” Sam said, cutting that off. “You get to the part where the railroad’s surveying around here for a second line?”

He knew Goodnight hadn’t, and he was a right son of a bitch for bringing it up that way, said Goodnight’s stare, right before the man turned and started talking to Reyes instead about it. Which was for the benefit of Billy, who was looking just as ungrateful about it, even though he started asking questions, enough that an uncharacteristically tactful Faraday seemed genuinely interested in prodding out more of the reasons why he was.

That carried them through most of dinner, which at least was short. Reyes put on a good spread but she and most of her pack ate like people who usually had only a handful of minutes to do it, and who had to keep one ear open while they were doing it, maybe because too much noise—like the way Vasquez would scrape his fork and knife against his plate—would earn them a whipping. The dark-skinned ones seemed young for it, especially this far west, but maybe they’d learned that the way that Sam had.

He grimaced, and then looked out the window. Lately he’d been remembering more of that time, no matter how much he tried to push it away. It’d been easier before, when the deaths of his family had just cropped up in his head like a big stone whenever he bothered to stop for long enough—funny to think of it as ‘easier,’ but it was true. 

“…keeping it open?” Vasquez was asking. Finally had his head out of his plate, nodding at the open windows.

“It’s better to be able to see too, not just hear and smell,” one of Reyes’ men was telling him. “You’ve hunted before, right? So you know there are ways around that. Come from upwind, rub yourself over with a fresh hide, anything you can do to fool a deer or antelope, you can do to fool one of us.”

“Well, yes, but it’s not a deer that’s following, is it?” Vasquez asked.

The conversation around them faltered, though he’d asked it in a casual, low tone. “The land around here’s got protections laid on it,” Reyes said after a moment. She leaned back in her seat, lounging more like a man, with one arm swinging insouciantly at her side. “I’m not saying it’ll hold everything off—you can only do so much before even the _gringos_ stop believing it’s leftover from last year’s _Dia de Muertos_ party—but I sleep fine. I might sleep lighter than you.”

Vasquez grinned appreciatively at her, which she returned with a wide, slightly-fanged smile that didn’t seem to faze him at all. “With five hundred on my head, I sleep light as a feather, _princesa_.”

“Not if the last couple days are anything to go by,” Reyes said, brows lifting. “You could’ve marched a brass band of whores through your room and wouldn’t have gotten so much as a twitch.”

“I think we should talk about what you found up in those books today,” Faraday interrupted, while the rest of Reyes’ pack looked on in undisguised amusement. “First time _muchacho_ here’s been up to learn all about the greatest library of magic in the West.”

“First of all, you need to stop butchering my mother’s tongue. I don’t find it so charming,” Reyes said, suddenly much less amused, as Vasquez blinked at them. “Second, nobody said it was the greatest. I told you all, I inherited a few from my old alpha, but she wasn’t really the book-type and if we really wanted to—”

“We sent another telegram this morning,” Chris broke in, more irritated than worried about the byplay. “But this time of season, he might be up the mountainside.”

Reyes raised her brows. “I thought you couldn’t pry him away from it, either of them.”

“Well, as you said, your library’s inadequate,” Lydia said dryly.

“Look,” Sam said, thinking he’d waited long enough. Some of them weren’t going to take this well anyway and he didn’t want to say it when they were already worked up. “Now that Vasquez is up, I wanted to—you know I’m facing a demon, that I called up years and years ago. It wasn’t any of your business and I figure we all settled accounts back at Rose Creek. Whatever you think you owe me, you don’t.”

“Sam,” Goodnight hissed. “ _Sam._ Sam, don’t you—”

“I can’t really believe I’m saying that word.” Sam paused. He was telling the truth, and yet—disbelief wasn’t the hardest thing in the world to live with, was what he’d learned in the last few days. Damn sight easier than grief. “But as far as we know, it’s real. And what I did after the fighting with Bogue, it raised the thing again. Again, it’s my business. We know enough that it shouldn’t touch any of you if I’m not around. I’m planning to leave in the morning.”

Goodnight inhaled his breath sharp, over his teeth.

“You follow me, I’ll shoot you,” Sam added, getting up. The way he lived, a roomful staring at him was a regular occurrence, but he couldn’t say it sat easily on him. “I know you heal now, but I’ll make it stick. Thanks.”

Nobody stopped him as he left the room. Goodnight was straining in his chair to, eyes blazing, but something kept him at bay. Sam wasn’t going to question it, and dropped his plate off in the kitchen before making his way out onto the front porch. Then he dropped into one of the chairs and breathed out.

It was a good half-hour, judging by the moonrise, before anyone came out after him. “Oh, you’re still here,” Billy said, tone completely lacking in surprise.

“Said in the morning,” Sam said.

Billy laughed, a short, skeptical sound. “Yeah. Goody’ll need another couple hours to wear himself out, so more like after midnight.”

“That’s morning,” Sam muttered before he could help himself. Then he looked over. “You and him made up, if you’re doing his work?”

All that earned him was a steady, even stare. Sam turned back, suppressing a grimace, and let himself sag in the chair. Honestly, he thought, looking out at the quiet hills, the first thing he was going to do was just find somewhere to set down his bedroll and sleep, and if it caught up, it caught up. But he was so tired, he just couldn’t work up the energy to care.

“You told Red Harvest?” Billy suddenly asked.

Sam flicked a look at him, but Billy still wasn’t giving anything away. “Earlier.”

“No wonder. He _liked_ the succotash, last night. They made extra tonight and he didn’t show.” Billy walked up to the rail and leaned over it. A weak breeze was running into the porch and he took a slow inhale into it. Then turned. “You really going to shoot him?”

“If I have to,” Sam said slowly.

“Oh, for—everyone in America is an idiot, whatever they look like,” Billy said, his eyes suddenly lit with anger. “You think I’m going to hold him back? I stopped working for other men when the railroad and I parted ways.”

“Wasn’t saying that,” Sam said, raising his hands. “Wasn’t at all.”

Billy’s face twisted in disgust. “No, but you were hoping. What the—” he twisted back around “—he was drinking himself down by the time I ran into him. The opium’s a little slower but it’s the same thing.”

“It doesn’t work on you now,” Sam pointed out. “I saw that.”

“You can make it work. I asked,” Billy said, tipping a look at Sam over his shoulder.

Werewolf be damned, Sam _would_ shoot him, no matter how fast he was now. It took a moment to make that seem—like something Sam didn’t actually care one way or the other about. “Goodnight’s my friend. He’s a good man, whatever he thinks,” Sam said after a long silence. “And he can make his own decisions. He made the decision to ride a different way, back years ago.”

In answer, Billy just laughed again, that same one. He turned around and went back into the house, his contempt rolling off him as thick as molasses. And lingering like the smell of it on a hot summer day, too.

It was probably why, when Vasquez wandered out onto the porch, Sam couldn’t help snapping, “I just said I wasn’t coming after you. It wasn’t a marriage proposal.”

“No, I didn’t think so,” Vasquez said, eyeing Sam a little curiously. Someone had found him his own pants, with the flashy silver buttons down each side, and he struck a match off a button as he lit a cigarillo. Then he offered one to Sam, who thought about it and sighed and took it.

They smoked in peace and quiet. A little hard for Sam to trust, but as time went on and Vasquez just slumped against a post, occasionally tapping the ash over the rail, he started to relax. It was a nice night, Sam thought. It honestly hadn’t been that long—he had to count up the days—but he’d already gotten into the habit of bracing himself every time something started to whistle up near him.

But nothing tonight. The breeze even went down, and while there was the low of the cattle and sometimes a stray insect hum, nothing that even remotely resembled human voices.

“Just curious,” Vasquez said. He gave Sam a moment to get over the sound of him talking. “How do you know it will only be you? And also—I asked, inside, but they are…busy.”

“Right,” Sam said. Worse that Goodnight hadn’t followed him out; the man was going to try to spring something, and Sam was going to have to deal with it. At least that meant he was more likely to be able to deal with it outside and away from the house. “I know I wasn’t there when the _kanima_ showed up, but it hunts by smell, Reyes says. It came across the ranch first is what I figure. But these things have a kind of…order to them, even if we don’t—no matter which one it is, it’s all the same. I’m the one who talked with it, so that’s why you all just—you feel it, but it’s not talking to you.”

Vasquez’s attention sharpened, as too late Sam caught the wording. “Talking? What is it saying?”

“I don’t think that’s important,” Sam said shortly. Then, when the man wouldn’t stop looking over, he got up. “It’s not meant for you anyway.”

“All right, all right,” Vasquez said, holding up his hands. He kept the pose for a few seconds, then took another drag on his cigarillo. “I’m just—”

“Curious?”

Vasquez took a moment. “I am,” he said. “It seems a very long time—I knew, you know. Before the Ranger even was down on the ground, I knew I was dead. It was just so much time, and still…it seems very long ago, for me. But longer for you.”

“It—ate at me, at the start,” Sam admitted. “But it’s like all things. You get used to it.”

“Do you?” Vasquez asked.

Maybe right now, Sam thought, looking at the path down to the road. Sure, he wouldn’t be able to get his horse, but the preacher in town might lend him money for a new one. He’d sounded relieved enough when Sam had sent to apologize for missing their meeting, and to let him know it wasn’t needed anymore. 

“You get tired,” Sam said.

He was tired, and not that young either, and that was why he was staring at the little cloud down the road before Vasquez stopped in the middle of his next question and also saw it. “You have your…” Vasquez started instead, looking down at Sam’s waist. 

Then he grimaced and twisted around, muttering in Spanish about how stupid he was, not insisting on his guns back. “Wait a moment,” Sam said, squinting at the approaching rider. “She said—Reyes said, she’s got protections on this place. Plus she can hear, can’t she? Nobody comes without her knowing, and she and Chris were both waiting on telegrams.”

“This late?” Vasquez said skeptically, though he was easing back from the front door.

“You can go in, just don’t come back out shooting,” Sam said. “Reyes is a rich woman. I think they’d send someone.”

The cloud resolved into a man and horse, and nobody else came bursting out onto the porch. The rider was still a few minutes away, but Sam found himself going down the steps, then to the end of the path. By then the rider was close enough that he could see there were actually two men on the horse. The one in front raised a hand to acknowledge Sam, which Sam returned with his own wave.

A few more minutes and Sam could see that man was dressed in dusty, well-worn clothes for the range, while the man sitting behind was wearing the kind of outfit you’d expect on a town clerk. He also was the one giving directions, telling the other one to pull up and then swinging down to approach Sam. “Mr. Chisolm?” he said, a little unsure. “Miss Reyes let us know she had visitors.”

“I’m him,” Sam said.

“Oh, good,” the man said, clearly relieved. He pulled open his coat and started rooting around in his pockets. “If she’s out, she said I could leave any telegrams with you. There was one and I’m sorry it’s so late, but my damn horse threw a shoe and then spooked, and I was walking till this man here came by and—”

“Alejandro Vasquez,” the man on the horse suddenly said, not as a question but as a statement. Not a friendly one.

Sam sensed more than heard Vasquez curse on the porch. He didn’t turn to look, but shoved the man in front of him aside and rushed up to seize the rider’s stirrup. But a shot had already rung out.

“What the—” came the telegram man’s faint but distinctly startled voice.

The rider kicked at Sam’s face, then tried to whip Sam with his reins, but by then Sam had gotten him down enough to grab his gun-arm. He shot again, wide, but the boom of it temporarily deafened Sam and so Sam kept his eyes on the gun as he wrestled the man off the horse. He made sure the gun hit the ground first, jamming his elbow behind him to keep off the hand he could feel scrabbling at his back, and then beat it against the ground till it skittered away.

A hot pain scored across his back, but even as he was flinching, it went away. Then the man was wrenched from him and Sam looked up—the telegram man had joined in, still looking shocked, but he had gotten a rock from somewhere and he smashed it into the rider’s face without hesitation.

Without the rider’s weight clinging to him, Sam fell back. He caught himself against the dirt with one hand, panting, and then—a commotion up at the porch got his attention. People were spilling out onto it, Reyes coming down the path, Goodnight with a rifle in one hand standing behind her on the steps, one of Reyes’ women darting over to the side where—she picked up the big red wolf with one hand and flung it over the rail, then twisted to snarl after it, eyes glowing like two blue stars. Sprawling out under her folded knee was Vasquez’s leg.

Sam was up by the red wolf before he knew it, his fingers knotted in its ruff as it fought him, snapping its teeth and bucking. He shoved it down, hard, and he could feel every muscle pushing back at him, but it stayed.

Just for a second, he knew. He got up to the porch and over the rail while he could, landing heavily beside the woman. She gave him a snarl too, but her hands were full, blood streaming thick over them where she had them pressed to Vasquez’s groin, over where it met the leg. Vasquez’s face was already white as paper, and Sam could tell from the glaze on his eyes.

“ _Shit_ ,” Sam said. 

His breath caught up with him all at once, like a cannonball to the gut. He put his hand down against the floorboards and something hard and curved pressed into his palm. Vasquez was looking right at him, right into him, the way dying men sometimes did, and the man wasn’t mad, just—of course, he could hear Vasquez thinking. _Of course. Now. Now. When I was just starting—_

 _Four_ somebody said to Sam, and he lifted his hand and the last claw was in it. Horne hadn’t wanted it—Horne had known. Men like them, they didn’t need a demon or anything like that to know when death wasn’t going to wait any longer, and Horne had been ready. 

Sam was ready. Vasquez wasn’t. Sam grabbed the woman’s wrist and when she snapped at him, he shoved the claw past her fingers and into the wound.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Dia de Muertos_ isn't a typo. This is before the holiday name got a little Anglicized and they stuck the 'Los' in there.
> 
> TW werewolves aren't affected by regular alcohol or other drugs, but if wolfsbane is added, that slows their healing or metabolism or what-have-you (the show never really specified) so that they do start feeling the effects.


	8. Robicheaux

“I swear to God, I had no idea who he was,” the telegram man earnestly told Miss Reyes. “He was just coming down the road, and my horse had just—and he said he’d give me a ride this far. He didn’t say he was here on business or anything like that, he just—actually, he said he had been planning to head west at the fork, but it wasn’t that much out of his way.”

Miss Reyes regarded the man for a moment longer, then sighed and raised her hand. “Put him in the front parlor and get him a drink,” she said, as the man sagged in relief. “Ethan, get into town and find out how long that bounty hunter’s been around.”

Ethan’s twin brother ushered the telegram messenger into the house, while Ethan dropped off the porch and headed to the barn. The porch had emptied out considerably once they’d taken Vasquez inside, but one of Miss Reyes’ men was squatting out in the road next to the fallen bounty hunter with Chris Argent, while Sam and Goodnight were standing on the porch with her. Sam was slumped in one of the chairs, absently rubbing his bloody hands. Occasionally he’d swat at the flies that’d stirred up, but otherwise he was deadly silent. He hadn’t spoken since Vasquez’s chest had heaved up as if to overturn a mountain and the man’s eyes had snapped open to show an inhuman amber glow about the pupils.

“How do you know he’s telling the truth?” Goodnight asked the woman.

“I could be poisoning him,” Miss Reyes said, glancing over.

“Not in the front parlor, surely,” Goodnight said. “Around your best linen?”

Miss Reyes quirked her mouth, then turned all the way around to face Goodnight. She reminded him of one or two women he’d known in New Orleans before the War: not society fixtures—in the Church’s eyes or not—but working women with businesses, millinery or hairdressing or dressmaking, respectable enough to earn good pews and sharp enough to always manage any misfortune without recourse to a man’s pocketbook.

“His heart’s beating faster than his mouth, you can hear that,” she said, tapping one ear. She pointed to her nose as well. “And he’s more afraid of me than that one out in the road. Anyway, whether he’s lying or not about the hunter isn’t what I’m worried about. You were down on the steps, do you think he saw it happen?”

She was referring to Vasquez’s resurrection. “I doubt it. He still was smashing in that bounty hunter’s skull,” Goodnight said after a moment’s consideration. “But if you know him that well—or at the least, he’s that acquainted with your bank account—”

“Money doesn’t buy what people seem to think it buys,” Miss Reyes said, wrinkling her nose. She folded her arms over her chest and stared out at the road. “I pay that man to let me know what messages are coming over the wire, not to know what goes on out here. But we can manage that. And he _did_ see your friend.”

The thoughtful way she spoke did not reassure Goodnight, and out of habit he found himself sliding his hand down his rifle. Then he caught himself.

So did Miss Reyes, though fortunately, she seemed amused by it. “Oh, five hundred dollars isn’t even what I spend on linens,” she said, grinning with just a little too much tooth to be ladylike. “I was thinking, he saw your friend get shot and bleed out, and he’s not going to remember what came after that after I see him, so that’s convenient. It’s just getting another body—though with your friend’s height, _that_ is going to be a trick.”

“Oh. Well, _there_ is an idea,” Goodnight said, blinking. “And while I’m afraid I can’t help you with the body, I can offer any other support you might need. Gladly.”

“In that case, try not to ride off yet,” Miss Reyes said. She locked her eyes on Goodnight, then dragged their gazes to Sam. Then, lifting her skirts away from the sticky, browning smears on the floorboards, she walked back into the house. “You and your friends need to stay out of sight till I have things arranged, and I don’t trust any of you to cross a creek without blowing out the whole valley right now.”

Goodnight started to call after her, then changed his mind. He looked at Sam, who had clearly been listening and who even more clearly wasn’t interested in breaking into the conversation, and then out at the men in the road, who were discussing whether they needed to keep the body in the road till the sheriff could come see it. Miss Reyes’ man seemed to be of the mind that it’d look suspicious to move it, while Chris disagreed and thought it helped the story. If somebody unexpectedly murdered your houseguest on your front porch, then you’d all be terrified about it and wouldn’t want to come out till you were sure it wasn’t the start of a bigger shootout, or so he was arguing.

“If you were nothing more than a plucky young woman trying to make her fortune in the wilds of California, I suppose that’s correct,” Goodnight murmured. “Personally, I can’t quite square that with her choice in footwear.”

“You’re looking at her boots?” Sam said. Rusty-voiced, his disbelief barely breaking through.

“No fainting violet that I’ve ever met would have that much iron plate in her shoes,” Goodnight said. When Sam went so far as to show faint curiosity, he pointed to the side of his head. “I can hear it when she walks.”

“This seems to have done you good, you know,” Sam said. He paused, looking Goodnight over, and then let out a short, low, airless chuckle. “Coming back. You’re…you look better. Sound better.”

“You know, I think you’re right,” Goodnight said.

He smiled and Sam’s mood faded. He could see—could feel the man retreating, a cold drag at his back that he didn’t think was entirely in his head. 

“Goodnight,” Sam started.

“Sam, whether it’s a demon or Satan himself, I don’t think they care whether you get what you want,” Goodnight interrupted. There were still too many people in earshot—Faraday’s agitated torrent wasn’t buzzing in his ears anymore, and shame about that since it would’ve done nicely as cover—but Goodnight had been picking and choosing his moments too long to wait for the perfect one. A maiming shot instead of a kill could stop a column just as well. “I think that’s the _point_. So if the idea was to get out there alone to talk them down—”

“Look, you don’t think I know that?” Sam said, snapping out of his chair. He barely winced as it clattered against the porch, then walked up to Goodnight’s rifle side, staring out towards the road. Paused a moment, and then kept on going down the porch steps and out towards the body.

Goodnight bit back a curse, then a sigh, and then shouldered his rifle and followed the man. Chris seemed to have won the argument, since he and Reyes’ man retreated to go around the side of the house, leaving the road to just Goodnight and Sam.

“This far enough to keep people from hearing?” Sam muttered once they were standing by the bounty hunter.

“Depends, I think, on how goddamn pigheaded you’re going to be,” Goodnight muttered back. “You still thinking about drawing fire?”

“I _think_ ,” Sam said, deliberately slow, “That this thing’s been watching and waiting, because I owed it four. And it got a taste of three, so now it’s not willing to wait.”

Goodnight opened his mouth, then closed it. Then looked around himself. The front yard had a split-rail fence running around it, entirely decorative as far as he could tell since it didn’t run back to the house itself. He set his rifle down against it, then straightened up in and looked Sam in the eye. “That is a load of horseshit, and you know I am an _expert_ in horseshit at this point. No, you listen—” he put up a hand in front of Sam’s moving mouth “—you aren’t going to make me think you threw Vasquez to this demon just to close the deal. You damn well saw him die, and you weren’t going to have that, and with a will like yours, Sam, you always—”

“Well, all right, then, let’s just call me Jesus Christ Our Savior and be done with it,” Sam hissed. “You always wantin’ to, to dress things up, and look to other men to hold you up when you’re tryin’ to make something into more meanin’ than it is and sometimes it’s just _not_. Sometimes it’s just—”

“If you want to just join them, you know how to use a gun,” Goodnight snapped. “Which would be a fine thing, when you wouldn’t let me.”

Sam looked incredulously at Goodnight. He even took a half-step back, as if he needed the distance to see, and then he shook his head. “That wasn’t the same—anyway, I thought you were—you’re—”

“I don’t think you really want to join them,” Goodnight started, and then he nearly hit his own thigh in frustration. It wasn’t the time for dressing it up, Sam was right about that, and he had to just—stop. “Your mother and your sisters. You didn’t want to be dead when I found you under that tree. You were fighting to come back, and you’ve been fighting since, and you wouldn’t be talking to me right now, right here, if deep down you weren’t still fighting, Sam. You wouldn’t be having such a hard time talking _yourself_ into going that you’re trying to make one of us do it for you. And what I just don’t understand is why you’re—”

“Why are you still even _trying_?” Sam said, exasperated. “Isn’t Billy leveling you out these days? You know I’m not going to.”

“That’s not even remotely the same thing,” Goodnight managed, before the clamp around his chest squeezed out too much air. He gasped a few times anyway, fighting for the words, and finally had to turn away from the other man. Put his hands on his thighs and dropped his head, and just…pulled in a breath. “You goddamn son of a bitch, Sam.”

He heard Sam exhale, rough and long. It sounded irritated more than anything, but as Goodnight stared at the dirt between his own boots, Sam…didn’t leave. The other man took another breath, this one just as long but more tired, and then shifted over so that his boot-tips were in Goodnight’s sights.

“You don’t owe me anything, at this point,” Sam said quietly. “We’re even.”

Goodnight did his best to swallow back his laugh. “Didn’t say it was you I owed.”

“I think you d—”

“Can a man not lie in peace?” Goodnight said, and then he realized. He winced, then forced himself to straighten up, rubbing at his eyes and nose. The bounty hunter smelled like six or seven kinds of rotgut, none of it good. Could barely smell the man standing right next to him over it. He looked absently around, wondering if it’d be worth at least retreating down the road. “What I meant was—Sam, did you honestly think nothing was going to happen after Bogue d—goddamn it. Damn it to hell.”

“Don’t usually see you so clumsy with words, Goodnight. Did you want a moment?” Sam said.

With enough humor in it…Goodnight looked over and he knew he was giving away the game. He might not be the aficionado for cards that Faraday was, but neither was he a gambling ingenue.

Still, that was _Sam_ looking back at him. Older, wearier, dull in a way that made Goodnight think of a good horse at the end of its life, legs solid but the eyes…but it was him, at least.

“I wasn’t really thinking, to be honest with you,” Sam said after a moment. Slow like he wasn’t sure he wanted to, but the words came. “I didn’t think…I didn’t think it’d take this _long_. I was busy trying to make sure it’d happen, Bogue dying. I mean…talking to people when you’re dying, and they’re not around when you’re back alive again, maybe you’re just making it up.”

“Did you really think that?” Goodnight said.

Sam sighed. “All right, no. I had the wolf’s paw, and also you—you saw the bodies.”

Goodnight nodded, grimacing at the memory. Then he stiffened, because he did remember, but—it was different, remembering before and after his own death. Before, he hadn’t thought much of it—freed slaves didn’t get the choicest land, and the site for Lincoln had been well out of the way. “I just thought they’d done your mothers and sisters ahead of you,” he said. “You said you’d come back to find them. And some of them had hunting dogs with them. I saw them, riding out of there.”

“Wasn’t _dogs_ that did that to them,” Sam told him, a flicker of that old, familiar rage rising in the man’s eyes. Then he twisted away, an unsettled look on his face. “I didn’t think about that either, not till what happened back in Rose Creek. And I know what you’re going to say, about the paw, but—”

“Sam, honestly, if anyone had anticipated werewolves, I would have truly thought I’d lost my last footing in sanity,” Goodnight said. 

The side of Sam’s mouth twitched. Then flattened. “Well, anyway. I’m not a fool, and if you’ve got nothing, and somebody comes along and says they’ll make a deal with you for nothing, even dying I don’t believe it’s that simple. So I was trying to make sure—I needed to see the man _die_. Not hear about it, see it. And that took a while. But it was long enough…I’ve gotten pretty damn lucky. You know, you were there for some of them.”

“I never thought it was anything _but_ luck,” Goodnight said. “I was there, and Death did pass you over, but it wasn’t anything I hadn’t seen with other men. So if you’re saying—look, you said so yourself, it couldn’t have been a fair deal. So why—”

“Because I wasn’t thinking,” Sam said, suddenly sharp with irritation again. He paused, then lifted his hand as if to cover his face, only to drop it back to his hip. “I just wasn’t. It took this long and I never got around to thinking what came after, and I’m—you know how many other people who knew them, who are still walking this earth? I never thought about it. Never bought new land, never put up another house, never kept anything that can’t fit in my saddlebag. Never thought about it.”

“ _I’m_ still walking,” Goodnight said.

It didn’t earn the snort, or even the glare, that he was hoping it would. “But I didn’t know you’d come back,” Sam said, just looking tired. “And before that…”

“Well, I don’t pretend to be enough,” Goodnight finally said, when it became clear that Sam didn’t have anything more to say. “I’m a piss-poor piece of Louisiana bloodstock as it is and death and resurrection can touch the flesh but neither of those mean much to the spirit—we both know that, so spare me. But I am, whatever my state of being, still your friend. And it’s been more than a week. Even if you hadn’t thought about it, you have _time_ now. And are you honestly telling me that you can’t do that? You can’t just consider it?”

Sam started to answer, and what was going to come out would have set off Goodnight’s temper, he could tell just from the way Sam’s eyes flicked to the side, never mind anything about the man’s smell or heartbeat. But then Sam thought better of it, and kept the words back. Instead he looked at Goodnight and his heart, it was slowing a little. Not dangerously, just…slower. Thoughtful, but maybe Goodnight’s flights of fantasy were off into the skies again.

“I’ve been thinking, if I make a deal, I keep it. I _was_ dying, but I knew what I was doing. I knew enough, anyway, that I’m not going to use that as an excuse,” Sam eventually said. Still slow, and quiet, and not at all defensive. “You can’t not honor your word, especially in that kind of set-up. If there is an after, I’m not going to spend it running from what I’ve done.”

“Then we won’t,” Goodnight said. “This clearly isn’t the first time something like this has happened, per Chris and Mrs. Martin and Miss Reyes, and—”

“Goodnight,” Sam said.

“Oh, you _cannot_ tell me I don’t have an interest in this, Sam!” Goodnight retorted, losing his temper. 

Then he had to stop himself. Losing his temper had…additional consequences these days, he thought, half-rueful, half-exasperated, as his body _twisted_ all over, muscles bunching up, another body trying to come through. When it wasn’t in anger, it felt no different than running his fingers through a stream, but when it was—it ached. It ached, and then it felt like the rightest thing in the world, the direction his body wanted to go in, and he knew that particular trap all too well.

“I guess you do,” Sam said. Then smiled a little, dry and thin, when Goodnight’s head snapped up. “I did this. You, Faraday and Billy, and now Vasquez—I did this. And if it’s going to follow me like—”

“I am _not_ a—” Goodnight started, and then the dead bounty hunter sat up.

By then Goodnight had leaped at least fifteen feet away, some primal instinct of his firing faster than any of his senses. He landed in a crouch, clawed hands digging into the rutted road, lips pulling back of their own accord from elongating teeth, and things started to catch up: two heartbeats, the freshened smell of blood, a sudden and disorienting cacophony as people seemed to be shouting from five different places around him.

They weren’t there; they were still back at the house. Sam was right there, and he’d caught on and gone for the rifle Goodnight had dropped, bringing it around as the dead man lurched jerkily to its feet. He fired and the right side of the corpse’s neck was taken off, gobbets of it flying past Goodnight as he ducked low and behind.

The smell suddenly changed, vile and acidic in Goodnight’s nose. He’d been on the verge of rushing the dead man’s back but he faltered, gagging, the bile rushing up his throat, and then he saw something on the back of the corpse’s neck. Some—change in it. Not fur. And he _knew_ the scent, he remembered it now—

“Chisolm!” shouted someone from near the house. “Shoot it in the eye! The eye!”

Sam jerked the rifle to the side, cursing, then scrambled backwards as the dead man suddenly rushed at him. Goodnight lunged forward, holding his breath, not that that did much good when his claws sank into the corpse’s back, then promptly ripped out, taking entire strips of putrefied flesh with it. His balance thrown, he stumbled and then whipped himself around, aware that he’d turned his side to the thing.

The dead man twisted unnaturally fast—tendons snapped out of the wounds Goodnight had left—and slashed at Goodnight. He raised his arm to take the blow and then screamed as a searing pain went through him. Then dropped to his knee, clutching his bloodied, spasming arm, as Sam swung the rifle level again and shot the thing properly.

It dropped like a rock, a knife falling out of its hand just a fraction of a section before the hand itself detached. Sam and Goodnight stared at it for a second, as a few last ligaments or some such frayed and popped, and then Sam stepped up, aimed down, and shot the corpse through the other eye.

“It’s dead,” called one of Miss Reyes’ men—Boyd, that was his name. He and Chris Argent had come running, with Miss Reyes herself close behind. “It’s dead, it’s dead.”

“What the hell was that?” Goodnight gasped.

“Revenant,” Chris muttered. He leaned over the body, then fell back, grimacing. “Hell. That’s…we’ll have to burn it.”

Miss Reyes came up next to him. “Damn,” she said. “I just finished with Johnny, too. We’re going to have to come up with something else and to do him all over again—honestly, if I’d known, I _would_ have just slipped him something.”

“And what in God’s name,” Goodnight grunted, levering himself up on one knee, “Is a revenant?”

“One way to bring back the dead. A bad way,” Chris said, glancing over. Then his wife came up and he turned to face her. “Well, with this he would’ve wanted to know anyway.”

“I wasn’t saying I disagreed, only that…” she replied.

She sounded oddly distant. Goodnight shook his head, then blew out his nose. He wasn’t smelling that _kanima_ smell anymore, and they hadn’t called it that anyway, they’d called it a…he looked down at the mess that was left and it didn’t look like the other one at all. The skin, where it was left, was mottled over with livery spots, like the man had been dead a lot longer than just a half an hour. Even as he watched, the spots were spreading; the corpse was rotting in front of their eyes.

“Goodnight?” someone was saying. “Good— _Goodnight_!”

“ _Shit_ ,” Chris Argent said in a heartfelt tone, and then everything went to darkness.

* * *

“All right, wolfsbane. Seems like you could have started with talking about how to use it to _heal_ ,” Sam was saying irritably.

Miss Reyes’ healer, Braeden, didn’t seem impressed, but Chris stepped in and went on with explaining different kinds of wolfsbane, calm enough that Sam couldn’t just raise his voice and persistent enough that Sam also couldn’t walk away. Not bad, Goodnight thought as he pushed himself up against the wall, then over to the edge of the table. Then he stopped, because his arm was still sore as hell, its perfect, unbroken skin notwithstanding, and on the whole he thought he’d had enough trouble for the night.

“What are you doing?” Billy asked.

Goodnight startled, then looked over at the other man. Billy had been there since Goodnight had woken up to Braeden standing over him with a bowl of freshly-ground powder that stung his nose and a hot poker, but then, so had the rest of them, minus Vasquez who apparently was still sleeping off his resurrection. With the terms they’d been on lately, Goodnight hadn’t attempted to read anything into it.

“Well, I do believe she’s finished with me,” Goodnight said after a moment.

Billy snorted, and didn’t move from where he was blocking the lone window. Goodnight pressed his lips together, hunching over, and then pushed himself off the table. He couldn’t quite bring himself to look Billy directly in the eye as he walked by the other man, and he wasn’t going to pretend his back didn’t stiffen up, but he made his way across the room, past the group clustered around Chris—Sam noticed, but he wasn’t going to be in the mood to chase and there were enough people Goodnight didn’t think the man would run off—and into the hall.

His balance still seemed a little off, but he was half-convinced that was only in his mind, since he didn’t feel any catch or lock in his joints. He _was_ thirsty, he thought, and took a right instead of the left he’d planned. Passed the room where they’d put Vasquez—started to pass, then stopped.

Vasquez was sitting on the bed, casually toying with the silver buttons they’d cut off his pants and positioned so it was clear he’d been eavesdropping in the direction of the botany lesson. “You look…” he gestured at his face, then mimed drinking.

“Forgot my flask again,” Goodnight said after a moment. “You’re human.”

As a response, Vasquez tossed the buttons to the bed and then stared at his raised hand. His brows knitted and Goodnight heard his heartbeat speed up. Then, sighing, he watched as his hand and arm to the elbow became covered in black fur, nails elongating into claws, muscles bulking out. He wiggled his fingers and everything changed back.

“It makes me a little dizzy, because my eyes change and things look different. But this isn’t so hard to control,” Vasquez said. “I think I can still draw a gun without shooting myself.”

“It’s not bad,” Goodnight agreed, and walked on to his room. 

There he had a moment of panic, when he didn’t see his flask on the dresser, but then he remembered he’d been reading in the corner when they’d called everyone to dinner. He was just retrieving the flask from the table on that side of the room when Billy showed up in the doorway.

“What are you doing?” Billy said, tone disbelieving.

“Having a drink,” Goodnight said after a second. He turned around, facing Billy, and then sat down in a nearby chair.

Billy pressed his lips together, then came all the way into the room. He looked amused when Goodnight startled, but only for a second. “Get that rattled?”

“By the prospect of death?” Goodnight said. He unscrewed the top of the flask but held off on taking a sip. Damn fine brandy, with a full, rich bouquet he could sniff all night, with his enhanced senses.

Didn’t do a damn thing to cover up the reek of anger coming off the other man. Emotions, Goodnight had learned, all had their distinct scents. Fear, as you’d expect, was variations on piss. Happiness had more of a range, while sadness was more of a feeling in the sinuses, thick dull weight. Anger, on the other hand, stung like chili pepper in your snuff.

“You know, just because you came back once doesn’t mean it can happen again. Sam doesn’t even know how he _did_ it anyway,” Billy said in a flat, clipped voice. The fur was crawling up and down his arms; when you shifted to a wolf, your scent…shifted too. Change wasn’t the word, change made it sound as if it wasn’t the same and it was still distinctly the same person, just…stronger. “He’s said that almost as many times as he used to talk about all the places who’ve sworn him in. He didn’t mean to do it.”

“I know,” Goodnight said, as mildly as he could. This was not the argument he wanted to have with Billy. They were past due for one, he knew that, but this wasn’t it. “Billy, I’m sorry it hasn’t been the same since, but I just had my arm stabbed by a corpse with a knife dipped in wolfsbane oil, and I’d like to catch my breath.”

Nine times out of ten, when Billy was upset, he would never show it to the one who’d upset him. Instead he’d take it under consideration and go off and then circle back to slice the guts out of the problem, once he’d secured the best angle for it, and that went for everything from the railroad’s other bounty hunters to extortionate opium dealers to Goodnight’s former habit of treating his nightmares with liberal amounts of alcohol and a nighttime ride towards the nearest steep drop. The eventual consequences were terrifying, but it did delay them.

This, however, was the tenth. Billy slammed the door shut, took two furious steps across the room, then jerked to the side, cursing in his native tongue as the muscles in his arms seemed to try and crawl off his bones. His legs underwent similar contortions, and despite his own intentions, Goodnight couldn’t help rising to his feet.

“ _No_ ,” Billy said, retreating to the wall. With the half-lengthened teeth, it came out more of a growl than a hiss.

“I heal,” Goodnight said after a moment. Nine times out of ten, he couldn’t stand the sheer intensity of the other man’s moods when Billy did choose to share them; he never deserved to anyway. This time—this time, with Sam just before, he just—he _needed_ a drink, damn it, and he wasn’t getting it. “I heal, goddamn it! I’m just like you, you heal, I heal, and—”

“I _know_ you healed, I can hear you sleeping straight through the night,” Billy snapped. He was twisted away from Goodnight, but Goodnight could see where the other man was digging fingers into a bicep, hard enough that the flesh underneath had whitened. It looked like Billy was trying to mold the muscle into the form he wanted it to be. “Whenever you aren’t at Sam’s heels, anyway.”

Goodnight exhaled, and watched Billy’s shoulders move a little. He could feel a laugh rising in his throat and drowned it in a hard swig at the brandy. Being a werewolf meant his body would burn through the alcohol before it could do anything useful for him, but at least he had that scorch in his throat. 

“Honestly, Billy?” he said, after. “You knew about that before. You knew _Sam_ before—I saw you, trying not to laugh when Faraday was introducing you.”

“Don’t remind me,” Billy muttered. He kept kneading at his arm and Goodnight started to smell blood—still in the body, flesh breaking before the skin did—and then he snorted hard and yanked his hand off his arm. He let out a frustrated noise, then again as he swooped his hand back from his hip, glaring at the claws tipping his fingers. “Look, if the idea is to save Sam from himself, I’ve seen men with that kind of debt before. They’ll maybe pretend to listen to you, but they know what they have to do and they’re still going to do it.”

“So overseas they make a habit of bargaining with the true underworld?” Goodnight asked.

Billy finally turned around to look at him. “If I knew anything about this kind of thing, I’d have my knives on,” he said irritably, gesturing at the bare places on his belt. “But I’ve—I know about men who make deals for their lives, and—”

“No, you don’t. You don’t and I don’t and _Sam_ doesn’t, damn it. He was goddamn lynched by a bunch of Pinkertons and his family had just been torn up in front of him, if he had a single sane thought in his head just then, he’d be a better man than Jesus Christ himself, who doubted on the cross. And Sam’s not Christ,” Goodnight snapped, taking a step forward. Which made Billy go still and that caught Goodnight up for a second. Then he shook his head, taking another pull from his flask. “I know what you’re saying, but also, we are _werewolves_. Werewolves. We turn into wolves. This is an actual fact of natural science we are now living, Billy, and so are—dragons who used to be men, and curses to bring corpses to life and send them after men, and there is no _way_ that what Sam did is the same as the men you used to work for.”

“What, that’s scientific fact too?” Billy said. He scratched at the patches of fur that periodically coursed across his arm. “Goody, you hate science. Remember we were in Dodge City and that engineer wanted to bet you, about his windspeed calculator and your rifle and I _liked_ that hotel. They’d just give us clean sheets, no questions, so long as we paid.”

“That wasn’t about the science, that was about his manners, of which he had none,” Goodnight said shortly. 

Billy raised a brow, and for a moment there, Goodnight thought they might—he smelled it too, the bite of Billy’s anger in his nose starting to soften. Then Billy grimaced. He looked around, then pulled over the other chair and dropped into it.

“Fine. Your friend Sam made some deal with some demon and now he and the demon both want him to pay up. That sounds like just plain business to me, even if it’s got a demon in it,” Billy said. He paused, then held his hand up. “I do know about him and you, and it’s not like you ever tried saving him before, so why now?”

“Well, he—” _didn’t need saving_ , almost came out of Goodnight’s mouth, but he caught himself.

He didn’t make the mistake of feeling proud of himself for it. He propped his elbows on his legs, then rubbed his hand over his face. Billy was looking at him when he stopped—no, looking at his hand. His fingers, with their blunt nails, and for a second Goodnight wanted to be petty. Wasn’t the first time either; he both admired and envied Billy’s composure, had since the moment they’d met. Even with knuckles bloodied nearly to the bone and a shipwreck’s worth of groaning men around him, the man hadn’t looked so much as perturbed.

“I didn’t think I’d live long enough to see him die,” Goodnight said instead. Smelled the surprise on Billy and couldn’t quite hide the rueful smile. Shame did seem harder for him to come by these days, possibly the side-effect of having to spend so much time outside of his clothing. “You knew that. I was just counting the days.”

“And now you’re not,” Billy said. His tone and face were unreadable but the emotions Goodnight could smell on him—and he smelled them himself. He grimaced, made a slight move towards the door, and then abruptly kicked his feet out in front of him. “I don’t give a damn if you want to cuddle up to him, you know. I got to know _him_ enough, I know where that’s going to go. But if he wants to pay up, he wants to pay up. You can’t pay for him, even if you wanted to, and I don’t think you do anymore.”

“I wasn’t trying to pay for him in the first place. Fine, yes, I’ve developed a new appreciation for life—are you _begrudging_ me that?” Goodnight said. He rubbed at his face again. “Is that the problem? Did you think—is this some sort of professional pride I’ve injured—since you were keeping me on my feet, and now—”

Billy rolled his eyes. “Now you’re being an idiot,” he said, while anger came to the forefront of his scent. “I wasn’t your damn bodyguard.”

“Partners, yes, I know,” Goodnight said.

“No, you don’t,” Billy muttered. He shifted in his seat, then dragged in his legs and sat up to glare down at his hands. “I can’t even—I miss my knives. It doesn’t feel right not even having one.”

“Well, I think it’s decorative at this point, given these—” Goodnight willed his claws to show for a moment “—but you know I’ve personally always been partial to ornamentation.”

Billy rolled his eyes again, less amused as Goodnight had hoped and more irritated. “You never knew a damn thing about knives.”

“And I didn’t pretend to,” Goodnight said, his own ire starting to rise. “Look, Billy, I’m not entirely sure how, or why, or when I’ve offended you, seeing as you insist it wasn’t anything to do with my misstep _before_ we died, but—”

“The grip.” For a few seconds, only the water pitcher to Goodnight’s right earned Billy’s scowl. Then Billy threw himself onto his feet, as animated as Goodnight had ever seen him. “The _grip_ is off. I have these—these claws now, and they won’t stay in and it throws off my grip and everything’s an inch off, Goody. An _inch_. Do you know how much that changes things?”

“Learn to throw with them,” Goodnight said, blinking. “The claws. With the—”

“It doesn’t work if they go away right when I’m getting used to them!” Billy said, pivoting to face him. “I can’t—I don’t know when they’re coming or not, and this might have fixed everything for you but it didn’t do that for me.”

“Well, then we’ll ask one of the other werewolves about it,” Goodnight said. “They obviously can control it.”

“They also told us not to worry about anybody coming up here, with all the magic they know, and next thing some dead man gets up and stabs you in the arm,” Billy snapped. He gave Goodnight a look as if that should settle the entire discussion, then dropped himself back in his chair.

Goodnight started to reply, then stopped himself. Contrary to what some thought, he did know when his advice wasn’t wanted; he offered it anyway for his own amusement. But this wasn’t funny.

“Do you want to—to go back?” Goodnight asked.

Billy lifted his head and gave Goodnight a cursory look. Then another, longer one. “Are you asking if I want to die again?”

“Well—you stayed. You stayed, back there,” Goodnight said, lifting his flask. He stopped, thinking he saw something change in Billy’s face, but that was just him thinking. Irritated with himself, he jiggled the flask, then tipped it back into his mouth. “You did. Whatever you have to say about Sam, you—”

“You were coming back,” Billy said, bored the way you are when you’ve outlasted irritation. “You were always coming back. You think you aren’t going to, but then, that’s what you do, no matter what comes out of your mouth.”

“You _stayed_ ,” Goodnight said. Just the anger in him talking, undistracted by the brandy—he was going to miss that, the way it loosened up the knots in him, or at least made it easier for his mood to slide past them. “You goddamn stayed. If you think you know me so well—you knew I was coming back, you knew I was coming back for one thing. One. I was a damn coward, I’ll say it. A coward. Right up till the end—you’re right, I was looking for it, and when I knew I had it, I just couldn’t bear it at first. Had to run off and sit with that and come back and when I came back you were there. You _waited_ , and why you did that—”

“Well, I never said I wasn’t looking for it too,” Billy said.

Goodnight lowered the flask. Billy’s brows lifted as he leaned forward on his knees, his hands hanging between them. He idly flicked his fingers, sometimes with claws at the end, sometimes not.

“Changed my mind about it,” he added after a long second. Twisted one hand up and frowned at the claws. “Mostly. These are still getting on my nerves.”

“We’ll work on that,” Goodnight said. Then paused.

Billy’s expression did change then, and against his will. He fought it enough that Goodnight didn’t want to put a firm reading on it, and the frustration in his smell, if Goodnight was even reading that right, colored everything else. Then his shoulders dropped.

“I’m not leaving now,” he said. He flexed out all of his fingers, then let them go slack. “But you can’t just _talk_ Sam out of it, Goody. You know you’re not that good.”

“Well, if you have any suggestions,” Goodnight muttered, putting his flask back to his lips. “I’m all ears.”

“I do, actually,” Billy said.

Goodnight put the flask down. Then pulled himself up, as the other man got up out of the chair and walked over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In TW, werewolves have varying abilities to manipulate other people's memories via insertion of their claws into the back of the neck. Beta (regular) werewolves seem to just be able to read/restore (somewhat) memories, while an alpha werewolf can cause someone to experience targeted amnesia.
> 
> Wolfsbane is poisonous to werewolves, but also can be used (in burnt form) to help werewolves heal faster.
> 
> One of my personal takes about werewolves is that they can smell emotions but that doesn't actually make them empaths. You still need to understand why the person is feeling the way they do, and having super-senses might actually make you less empathetic because you assume your senses tell you all you need to know, so you don't bother to sit down and talk things out. And also we're in the era of manly men who don't share their feelings easily.


	9. Faraday

Werewolves, Joshua had decided, were useless, destructive nuisances. They left fur everywhere, their claws nicked pieces out of everything, and on top of that, when one shifted out of human form, it got bigger.

“ _Guero_ , I was taller than you anyway,” Vasquez said, amused, as he dropped back from the cupboard he’d been raiding, earthenware jug in hand.

“They did tell you that we can still be killed, right?” Joshua said, watching as the other man, whistling softly to himself, rooted out a pair of cups and then began pouring out servings from the jug. “Mountain ash, wolfsbane, even sheer physical force, if applied correctly. And having seen it with my own eyes, I can assure you that the lady of the house is very protective of her property. Especially that homemade firewater of hers.”

Vasquez lifted one cup to his nose, sniffed—his eyes glowed briefly—and then made a pleased face. “Oh, I asked her. She said I come to be a werewolf the way I did, with someone like Sam Chisolm behind it, I can have a drink from any bottle in this room.”

The damn claws came out. They always did when Joshua was annoyed; with that kind of tell, he didn’t even have to worry about their better senses of smell or their ability to hear heartbeats. He shifted his arms, then forced himself to not hide his hands. After all, the very first lesson of bluffing was to not look like you cared about it.

They were just a pretty damn obvious thing to have to redirect eyes from. Nuisances. “Yeah, she likes you,” Joshua said.

“Hmmm?” Vasquez looked up as he seated himself. Then pointed to the other cup. 

“She’s not that fond of me, can’t imagine why,” Joshua said, staying where he was. “Although I’ll admit, if I’d come with a man who attracted the kind of company that Chisolm does, I might be rethinking my good Samaritan deeds, too.”

“She likes you,” Vasquez said. He took a swig from his cup, then looked at Joshua. Then reached over and flicked the other one so that it skittered towards Joshua, almost to the edge of the table. “It’s the other one, Argent’s wife, who doesn’t like you. Because you’re a bad gambler.”

“I am a _fine_ gambler, thank you, and she and I just have professional differences as to how you play the game,” Joshua said. “Namely, that I don’t carry a pair of purpose-made distractions around on my chest, so I have to work at it.”

Whatever was in the cup did smell fine—smelled better than fine, with a sharpness that cut into his nose and then blurred into a soft, smooth heat. He pressed his lips together, then shrugged and got off the wall and came over to the table. Picked up the cup, sniffed again, and then stared.

“This, you drink to drink,” Vasquez said. He hooked his chin at the impressive selection of bottles behind the bar that ran across a third of the room. “Those, you drink just to taste. That’s what she said.”

“You can smell that stuff, what’d they call it. Wolfsbane,” Joshua said, looking into the mug. He couldn’t see anything—the liquor was clear, without any particles. He swirled it around a few times, then took a sip.

Burned right. And then…yes, it did keep on burning, a slow stream of warmth that he hadn’t felt since the night before Bogue had come to Rose Creek. There was that slight bitter note he assumed was the wolfsbane, but he didn’t mind it as much as he would’ve thought.

“Could kill you, this tastes so good,” Joshua muttered, drinking more.

“Mmmm,” Vasquez said. “So how else do you kill us?”

Joshua didn’t exactly choke, but he did swallow faster than he intended to, given how much he was enjoying the liquor. He looked up at the other man, annoyed, but Vasquez appeared to be genuinely curious. And that just…Joshua sat back. “You don’t think you want to give it a day, or something like that? With…you know…”

For a moment, Vasquez looked confused. Then his eyes narrowed. “I died, you don’t think I should know how I can die again?”

“Well, no, that actually makes perfect sense to me. This just seems—quick,” Joshua said. “To be talking about it already.”

“Oh.” Vasquez considered his drink. Then shrugged. “It didn’t last that long.”

“But you still _died_. Doesn’t that bother you at all?” Joshua said.

Vasquez looked sharply at him, and then—Joshua grimaced, but the other man’s nostrils were already flaring. That was something else, the whole smelling thing. At least with the claws, after the first few snickers, the others had taken to just averting their eyes. Sure, it ate at Joshua’s pride, but he’d swallowed worse in the name of survival, and eventually he’d figure out how to keep the claws in. This whole ability to tell what another man was thinking without even reading their face or their voice, on the other hand…hell. He hadn’t been that good with honesty even when he _could_ kill the people on the other end of it.

“Do you remember yours?” Vasquez asked.

“What?” Joshua said. Then he really registered what the man had just said. “Wait, what—why the hell would you ask that?”

“Because I don’t. Not much,” Vasquez said after a moment. He paused, then picked up his cup but didn’t drink, just wiggled it between his fingers. “It hurt like hell, and then it stopped hurting but I was cold, and then I am inside and I realize I can turn into a wolf. It was very quick, yes?”

“Yeah. Yeah, and you’re looking about as fine as Goodnight with it,” Joshua muttered. 

Vasquez had no goddamn right to look confused about that, but he did anyway. He kept looking at Joshua like he expected something more, and when Joshua shrugged and leaned back in his chair and stared right back at him, Vasquez…went back to his drink. Just sitting there, sprawled out as comfortable as could be, and smelling just as easy about it.

“I think…maybe because he knew it was going to happen,” Vasquez said, just as Joshua was thinking to slam back his drink and leave. He paused, then moved his cup slightly in Joshua’s direction. “Bringing me back. He didn’t know with you. He just thought he was going to die.”

“Well, it’s a good thing I’m not the kind to take it personal, somebody choosing a murdering Mexican outlaw over a fine, upstanding, three-generations-born American like myself,” Joshua said.

“But that wouldn’t be the same with Goodnight,” Vasquez went on, as if Joshua hadn’t said anything at all. “But then, Goodnight is an old friend. He knew Chisolm. So when Chisolm is upset, this is not a new thing for him.”

Joshua exhaled. “You going to make sense any time soon?”

“I am thinking about this. The way this works, for you—” Vasquez motioned towards the—temporarily—hairier—of Joshua’s hands “—and now for me. When Chisolm is upset. I only saw how you acted before, but now…there is this…in the back of my head sometimes.”

Unfortunately, Joshua knew _exactly_ what the man was talking about. He’d gotten the cup halfway to his mouth before he caught Vasquez looking at him, half-curious, half-pitying, and after that—he downed the rotgut anyway. Especially since this was the kind that actually worked on him.

“You going to pass that over any time soon?” Joshua asked, tipping his now-empty cup towards the jug.

Vasquez’s eyes narrowed. “You die and you come back and you see other men do the same thing, and this is what you want to do about it?”

“Well, I _thought_ we had the same idea here,” Joshua said.

“ _Guero_ ,” Vasquez started, irritated, and then he got up from his seat. Shook his head, taking the jug with him, and then started to walk out of the room.

It didn’t take but a second for Joshua to catch up. His new body worked a damn sight better when he wasn’t thinking about it, his legs twisting out to keep his knees catching under the table as he leaped over it. 

Vasquez, however, could do the same thing now. In the second that Joshua spent in the air, the man shoved the jug and cup onto the bar and then twisted to grab at Joshua. Who, fantastically, could actually _see it coming_ and _move_ out of the way. Being a werewolf was a _little_ fun, he’d admit.

But again, Vasquez could match him. Story of his life, honestly, just another hardworking American trying to do his best to get in front of his fellow citizens, and just when he thought he had a lead, some other son of a bitch had to come along and show him up. Less than two goddamn hours, Vasquez had been up from his cooling board and he was already better at this than Joshua was.

“I don’t think she’s going to care,” Vasquez said.

Joshua blinked, then looked away from the ceiling. “What?”

“Who is better,” Vasquez said. He cocked his head, studying something, and then slowly curled his fingers up from where they were pinning Joshua to the floor, claws merging into the tips as he did. A flicker of sympathy went through his face as Joshua hissed, but then his eyes moved a little up and he was grimacing instead. “This kind of rug, I think she just cares she can’t wash it.”

“Well, it’s your fault I’m bleeding on it,” Joshua said.

“It’s _your_ fault you tore it in half,” Vasquez countered. “Also you already stopped bleeding.”

Joshua thought about the last minute or so, then…sighed and nodded. Not his best plan, but sometimes he thought this was almost like having another person in his head, with ideas and reactions coming up before he could even understand why. And then he remembered. “Look, actually, I’ve been—I’ve been trying to think about that. I wasn’t coming down here just to put up with you, I wanted to know—since you’re the newest, if that was coming up for you, the thing in your head.”

The last traces of humor slipped off Vasquez’s face. He twitched—Joshua heard his heartbeat before the movement happened and grabbed the man’s leg. Earned him a bemused look, but Vasquez stayed put this time. “Is he—is it him?” he finally asked.

“What, Sam?” Joshua grunted, trying to push himself up using that grip on the other man. “Hell, I hope so, because if there’s some other asshole moping around in there, I’m tempted to knock in a hole for them. There’s only so much of another man’s grief a man can take.”

Vasquez breathed out and—Joshua frowned, smelling him. Then got hold of himself, because yes, the sense of smell, he found that useful but that didn’t mean he was an actual _dog_.

Not that Vasquez noticed. “So that’s the same. It’s you—” he lifted his hands and curved them towards each other, making a pocket, then moved them over a few inches and did it again “—and him. You can tell it apart.”

“Well, yeah, I know what the hell _I’m_ sad about—mostly the fact that I can’t ever partake in sweet Rosa from Nacogdoches again. Sweet, sweet Rosa…and her three cats,” Joshua said.

“ _Guero_ , sometimes you say things and I think I liked you better when you were a wolf who didn’t remember,” Vasquez said, rolling his eyes and levering himself off Joshua’s waist. His shirt-tails flapped up and he started to push them down, then realized he had blood on his fingers. Raised one hand towards his mouth, then stopped and looked sharply at Joshua.

“You can’t control—well, fine, _you_ can, because Sam’s got a preference for people running from their past, apparently,” Joshua snapped, flushing. Which was _better_ , he suddenly realized. Better if he was angry, if that was what the other man smelled. He couldn’t control his scent but smell was like anything else, you could have too much, and if you had too much, you generally only remembered the first and the last part. “Between you and Goodnight—”

“So where is Chisolm?” Vasquez abruptly asked. He looked at the ceiling, his eyes running back and forth over the beams. “I don’t feel him now.”

He was trying not to look like it, but Joshua could smell the confusion on him, and that made things a little better. So Vasquez had more of a handle on this; his new state of being still wasn’t giving him all the answers about itself.

“I think it’s magic. You know, why the house sounds bigger than it is, and you can’t hear anything in certain rooms,” Joshua said, sitting up himself. He took the time to brush down his clothes—Vasquez’s claws had gone straight in, leaving holes that’d be easy to stitch once the blood was washed out, so he at least wouldn’t have to beg another shirt from Reyes—and get to his feet before he faced his increasingly impatient companion. “He went off to the other end, I’m guessing wherever he can go where Goodnight’s not going to follow him. I think he knew bringing you back wasn’t going to kill him either, but you couldn’t tell from the way Goodnight was going at him earlier.”

“You still think he wants to die?” Vasquez said.

Joshua mouthed the air a little in disbelief, then laughed. “What, and you don’t?”

“He brought me back,” Vasquez said. Then, before Joshua could even start to reply, Vasquez made an irritated noise and moved his hand in a quelling motion. “He can like you better, I don’t care. You died first, you came back first—if that makes you proud of yourself, fine. But he can die, yes? He’s no werewolf, and now he has no claws. He didn’t save one for himself. Why?”

When Joshua didn’t immediately say anything, Vasquez didn’t look so surprised. Him walking over to the remaining intact chair and righting it did start to confuse the other man, and when he sat in it and looked up, Vasquez seemed downright wary. It wasn’t even about whatever smells or heartbeat cues Joshua was giving away, he figured. Vasquez was watching his _face_.

“Well, it could mean he thought since he didn’t drop that in Horne’s grave, he needed to use it on somebody. That’s why we fetched up here in the first place, wasn’t it? He was looking for his other old compadre who’d died in the course of his crusade against Bogue,” Joshua said. He crossed his ankles. “On the other hand, it’s not like when you started twitching and he didn’t drop dead, he took out his gun and rectified the error. And I know some men think eating a bullet’s dishonorable, but Sam Chisolm strikes me as the kind who knows what people think of him when he’s dead is irrelevant because he’s _dead_.”

“You were thinking about this,” Vasquez said, bemused. “You think more than I thought, _guero_.”

Joshua shrugged. “Why, thank you. Can’t shoot without mauling a trigger, shredded three and a half decks, can’t stand Goodnight’s goddamn morning music…yeah, I decided I’d do some thinking, in my plentiful spare time. And I think he remembers more about that deal than he’s letting on. He _is_ trying to close it, but hell, you deal with the devil, he don’t play fair.”

“It is not your devil,” Red Harvest said.

“Jesus Chr—” The rest came out as a growl, as Joshua jerked himself out of a leap and fought down his body’s attempt to reform himself.

He wasn’t the only one either. It was a little gratifying to look up and see the fresh rips in Vasquez’s clothes and finally see evidence the other man wasn’t managing this perfectly. All right, a lot gratifying, and when Vasquez turned and saw Joshua eyeing a gaping seam along the thigh, Joshua knew damn well he smelled pleased and was happy to acknowledge it with a smirk.

“Why can’t I hear him?” Vasquez muttered, still obviously collecting himself.

“I know about werewolves,” Red Harvest said, with a little sigh at the end, as if he was talking to children. He looked around the room. “What were you doing?”

“Fighting,” Joshua said, as Vasquez glanced over, frowning.

“You should stop,” Red Harvest said. “They want to talk about Chisolm.”

* * *

By ‘they,” it turned out Red Harvest meant Billy, Chris Argent and Lydia, Reyes, and a very agitated Goodnight. ‘They’ did not include Sam, because at some point in the last hour, Sam had accepted a glass of water and promptly gone to sleep.

“Do you _honestly_ think this is the best way to bring him to his senses?” Goodnight was raging. “Because as the man here who’s known him the longest, I can assure you, when he _comes_ to his senses, the first thing he’s going to do is—”

“If he shoots you, me, or those two, it’s not going to do anything unless he has the right bullets, and I already made sure he doesn’t have those,” Billy said. “Look, Goody, it’s done. And he wasn’t listening to you anyway.”

Goodnight stared at Billy, the look in his eyes wild enough that Joshua was relieved there were no rifles in sight. Then he swung around. He briefly faced Joshua and Vasquez—Vasquez held up his palms—and then shook his head. Kept turning till he was looking at Chris, who did not look pleased about things but who also didn’t really seem that upset about it.

“I thought you were his friend,” Goodnight said in an accusing tone.

“He thought we were going to ask him to drink it,” Billy interrupted, as Chris looked startled. “It was me and Erica here who just gave it to Sam.”

“And before you start raging at me, let me point out that one, I’m not his friend, and two, I’m the alpha here, and I’m always going to be concerned about my pack’s survival first,” Erica said. She looked downright bored with it all, perched on a table corner with a box of jewelry in her lap that she was burnishing, one pearl at a time. “This isn’t a demon like I thought, and if it’s not a demon, then the protections I’ve got laid down aren’t going to work. That revenant was over my property line when he came back. That shouldn’t have happened.”

“I thought you knew what you were talking about,” Joshua couldn’t help saying. “You have all those books upstairs.”

Reyes didn’t move much, just tilted her head to look at him and let the red flood into her eyes. Even so, all the hairs on Joshua’s body went stiff and the pit of his gut clenched. He wasn’t ever going to call himself a model citizen, but he knew his measure, and he wasn’t a coward either. It was just every inch of his flesh that wanted to cringe in front of her.

Vasquez said something to Reyes, sharp, in Spanish, and she looked up and suddenly she was reeking of amusement, while Vasquez looked and smelled annoyed. She answered back, nodding at Joshua, and then Chris Argent decided to break in.

“I was going to tell Sam, and that’s why I asked Billy if we could get him somewhere alone and quiet,” Chris said, slow, not exactly accusing anyone, or answering any accusations, but saying more than just his words all the same. “A demon could work through a _kanima_ , because they’re still alive, but not a revenant. If a demon takes over a dead body, it’s still a demon, and everything that works against a demon should still work. So a demon couldn’t have sent that one.”

“Well, wait, that doesn’t make any sense. If it’s a demon, it doesn’t need to make sense. Right?” Joshua said. “It’s a demon!”

“These things have rules, and just because you haven’t learned them doesn’t mean they don’t exist,” Lydia said, as if that should have been obvious from the beginning. “Also, since it _was_ a revenant, I could ask after it in a way that I couldn’t with the _kanima_. It wasn’t a demon who sent it, it was someone who’s still alive.”

“Who?” Goodnight snapped.

Lydia looked at him for a moment, till his gentleman’s manners were almost about to forget themselves. “I don’t know,” she said. She didn’t seem to take offense when he exhaled a near-growl at her. “My powers don’t work like that. I—”

“What are you?” Vasquez suddenly asked. Then smiled at her, as if she was going to give that any weight; sometimes Joshua wondered whether Argent had courted her with pieces of ice. “Can I ask? Since I’m a werewolf now?”

“I’m a banshee,” Lydia said. She glanced over at Joshua’s incredulous noise, but just briefly. “It’s a type of—”

Reyes broke in, saying a lot very quickly in Spanish, with several repetitions of ‘La eh-Row-na,’ which made Vasquez raise his brows.

“It’s not that close to that story,” Chris said, looking a little irritated.

“For one thing, I have _never_ , ever thought my life depended in the least on whether a man returned to me. If he doesn’t come back, I have better things to do than drown myself in a river,” Lydia snapped.

“La _Llorona_ ,” Joshua realized. “I _have_ heard of that one.”

“You finally learning Spanish, _guero_?” Vasquez grinned.

“Well, he should catch up to the rest of us,” Billy muttered. He and Goodnight were back to having a staring match with each other, though halfway through his comment, Goodnight abruptly turned his back and stalked over to the liquor cabinet in the corner. It didn’t smell like it had the right kind in it, but Goodnight didn’t seem to care; Billy did, but he covered it up by the time Goodnight had turned back around. “She doesn’t have the right books, Goody. We weren’t going to find out enough here anyway, and if we’ve got to go somewhere else to find out—how do you think Sam was going to take that? Did you think he was just going to say, sure, let’s find out?”

“When he wakes up, he’s sure as hell not going to say anything like that,” Goodnight said, before sloshing something out of a green decanter into a glass and downing it. “And anyway, I’m not sure I believe this. Joshua there has a point—first we were told it was a demon, that you knew it for sure and you knew how to deal with it, and now you’re telling me—”

“I’m telling you what I think based on what I know, and that’s what I told you before,” Argent said. Still keeping his temper a fair bit better than most men should, but he was starting to let some steel sneak into his voice. “It sounded like a demon, from what Sam said and what you said. You said you didn’t see anyone leave, and you should have, so—but Lydia can pick up things sometimes that only the dead know, and the dead are saying they don’t know this one, the one that’s after Sam. So they’re still alive.”

“And I appreciate the compliment about my library, but it’s not the best, not even close. My old alpha wasn’t really that much for books, she just happened to end up taking them from people who did,” Reyes said. She’d closed the jewelry box and folded her hands over it, leaning back to watch them all through semi-slitted eyes. “She was pretty new to this all, too—we mostly are, this far west. Nobody’s been out long enough to have passed this down to children, we just bite each other.”

Red Harvest snorted. “If I could have asked my elders, that would be different.”

“Well, if you could have,” Reyes repeated in a pointed tone. Then she shrugged, tossing her hair over one shoulder as Red Harvest glared at her. “Listen, by the time I came out here, this land was cleared out. I don’t know what happened to your werewolves, but I wasn’t here for it. And anyway, I thought you wanted to help your friend.”

Which had been something Joshua had been wondering himself, and from the way that Goodnight raised his head and looked over, so had he. Billy rumbled in his throat, low, and Goodnight pressed his lips together, then looked down at the floor.

“I want to stop this from turning into death,” Red Harvest said, not showing any sign he cared about Billy’s intervention. “If we let him, I think he will do that.”

“He’s not trying to,” Goodnight started.

“He is trying to end this and he does not know what he is ending,” Red Harvest said without looking over at him. “He does not care either. All he hears is his family calling him, and I know this is how it ends in death. If you only hear the dead, and no longer hear the living, you do not care what happens here. You stop seeing it.”

“I was trying to say,” Chris said, raising his voice some as Goodnight looked about to break in. “The alpha of our pack—”

“What, I’m not looking at her?” Joshua said.

Lydia snorted. “Oh, I am looking _forward_ to this.”

“Stiles,” Reyes said. Then grinned when they all looked at her. “His name. Stiles. Well, his nickname, but his birth one’s Polish so nobody bothers with it. He was born a werewolf, and so was his mother, and on and on. They go far back, over in Europe. They know things, because they go so far back. More than we do, ones who just come to this by a bite.”

“He does know the most about magic and the supernatural of anyone I’ve ever met,” Chris said. “And we already sent him a telegram, and he said to come up.”

“I keep those books around so I can defend what I have. He keeps his books around because he likes reading up on this stuff, him and his,” Reyes added, ignoring the annoyed look Chris gave her. “And listen, before you tell me off for throwing you out, I’ll have my pack follow you to the end of our land. I’m not throwing you out with nothing.”

“Just seeing that we leave,” Billy said.

Joshua had been expecting that from Goodnight or maybe Vasquez, who had stopped even looking like he wanted to joke around and who had been intently watching the conversation get tossed around the room. Billy was calm about it, but he’d still gone through the trouble of pointing it out, and Reyes seemed a little bemused that it was him too.

“Well, it is my land,” Reyes said. Then she grinned again. “Anyway, while you don’t know who’s after you, Stiles’ territory is safer anyway. _I_ just have a pack and some magic books, _he’s_ got a tree that will eat anyone or anything coming, if he doesn’t want them there.”

“Wait,” Joshua said. “ _What._ ”

* * *

The next morning, they were packed up, including Sam, and heading north towards Mount Shasta, and things still weren’t making any damn sense to Joshua. “A goddamn tree that commits murder?”

“Are you getting out?” Vasquez asked.

They had to take one wagon, since even when he was drugged till only the white showed when you peeled back an eyelid, nobody wanted to put Sam Chisolm on a horse. Goodnight had taken Sam’s horse, while Reyes wasn’t lending them any since as she reasoned, it was too expensive to train a horse to stand a werewolf to give any to a bunch of men who had somebody sending monsters after them, and anyway, they’d be faster on their own four legs. Billy had shrugged, peeled off his clothes and, after some grimacing, shifted to wolf. Then he and Goodnight had taken up eyeing each other from opposite sides of the wagon, so Joshua had decided he’d rather build up his tolerance for that from the driver’s seat. At least then he had the cart-horse to distract him.

Vasquez hadn’t seemed all that broken up about losing his horse, even before Reyes had tossed him a little leather pouch of coins, and he’d climbed into the back of the wagon with the excuse about keeping an eye on Sam, even though their hearing would allow them to do that from probably half a mile off. Maybe he was avoiding the werewolves from Reyes’ pack, who were in front with Argent and Lydia and behind, but somehow Joshua doubted it.

Probably how he kept asking if Joshua would let him drive the cart. “You might know some fancy tricks with rope but nobody with pants like yours is going to know a damn thing about driving,” Joshua muttered. “That goddamn jingle would stampede a herd of deaf cattle.”

“There is no jingle, _guero_ ,” Vasquez said, with enough of a groan to make Joshua look back.

He was just stretching. Without his pants, and they’d tented a blanket over the unconscious man they were more or less kidnapping, but Vasquez wasn’t under that part, so the sun licked across the length of his legs. 

“Think that’s a good idea?” Joshua said without thinking, and then bit back a curse as, of course, the other man turned towards him. “Goodnight’s going to get sick of trying to drag something out of Argent and drop back here eventually, and he does seem powerfully protective of Chisolm.”

“I am over here,” Vasquez said, wiggling his fingers where they were splayed against the wagon-bed. Then he bent his head, doing something in the corner—tying his clothes down, that was where they had gone. “You sure you don’t want to change?”

“With you?” Joshua said, focusing on the irritation in his voice.

“I think this wasn’t so tight, before,” Vasquez muttered, twisting one shoulder so the edge of the shoulder-blade strained up towards the sky.

And then he was a wolf. His head came up and he looked at Joshua, absently resettling himself as the wagon bumped over the ground. He smelled confused for a second, as if they’d been talking about something completely different, and then he eeled himself around, tail lazily flicking, and hopped off the back of the wagon.

Billy coursed a little closer to see and he and Vasquez circled each other, then came to some sort of head-bobbing accommodation. Vasquez loped off, then came back around. Then loped off again, doing ellipses around the wagon as it trundled on. Stretching his legs, Joshua realized.

“The reins,” Red Harvest said, out of nowhere.

It was _irritating_ how the man could still sneak up on them. Irritating, and on this kind of uneven ground, damn near dangerous. “It’s a good thing I _do_ know how to drive, and I’m not about to drop these short of a cannonball.”

“You’re going to break them,” Red Harvest pointed out. 

Slice through them was more like it, and Joshua had to temporarily wrap the leather around his wrists as he concentrated on forcing his claws away. While he was preoccupied with that, Red Harvest tied his horse to the backboard and then climbed into the wagon, leaning over Chisolm. Up front Goodnight twisted around, peering back at them, and then shook off the hand Argent tried to put on his arm.

“You know, I’m generally not the type to interfere in another man’s business, at least until it interferes with mine, but I think Goodnight’s taking issue with this,” Joshua observed.

“He doesn’t have to like it but he came,” Red Harvest muttered.

Joshua shrugged. “Well, I don’t think he had much of a choice, did he? You, on the other hand…hell, no need to finger your knife like that, I ain’t moving and my hands are full. I’m just noting that it’s not like you made a deal, or turn into something furry with big teeth. Do you?”

Red Harvest looked at him. Then, at his feet, Chisolm grunted and he squatted back down, not touching the man but staring intently into Chisolm’s face. 

“You could leave,” Red Harvest suddenly said, not turning around. “Werewolves leave their packs and find new ones. We would give you your money.”

The grass was getting shorter as the hills got taller. When Billy and Vasquez were on the move, their heads still stayed below the tops, but whenever they slowed down, the ears would start to poke up. That was Vasquez’s pair, Joshua decided. Both of them were black-furred, but he had a habit of flicking his tail up at the same time, showy no matter what body he was in. Billy was better at finding a shadow to hide him even with the sun directly overhead.

“Yeah, I could, and then I could spend the rest of my days watching over my shoulder for another man’s nightmares,” Joshua said under his breath, watching that tail-tip. “Think next time I decide to sign up for a wild adventure, I might inquire about the company first.”

No commentary from the wagon-bed, but somehow Joshua got the sense that Red Harvest was, in fact, listening to him, and maybe even wanted to ask a question. That was novel enough that he started to turn to see if he was right, only to note Goodnight had finally made up his mind and was coming back.

“I do not want to kill him,” Red Harvest abruptly said. He was probably eyeing the same thing. “I want to kill the one who made him the deal.”

“Well, they’re kind of one and the same, ain’t they?” Joshua said.

“Not yet.” And then Red Harvest was astride his horse and untying it from the backboard.

He’d fallen back nearly to the last of their escorts by the time Goodnight got up to the wagon, lips pressed as tight as a spinster aunt’s legs. “Sam still out?”

“If he wasn’t, I think you’d know by the bulletholes,” Joshua said dryly.

For which Goodnight showed no appreciation. He gave Joshua a completely undeserved warning look, then reined his horse in aside the wagon for a peek under the blanket at Chisolm. Steady as Chisolm’s heartbeat was, Goodnight still smelled like worry and grief, to the point that Joshua turned his face into his shoulder and sneezed on purpose.

Goodnight jerked his hand back from the wagon, glaring at Joshua again, and then tucked the blanket back in place. “To each their own, but if he keeps coming up from behind like that, I’m going to take his bedroll and soak it in turpentine,” he muttered, glancing at Red Harvest. “At least then I can keep track.”

“Is that how he’s doing it?” Joshua asked, genuinely interested. “He’s what, rubbing something on himself?”

“Chris thinks it’s more like a magic charm. Probably a little thing he wears, somewhere on himself,” Goodnight said, sounding distracted. Off in the distance, Billy and Vasquez’s ears were side-by-side. Still moving, like a tandem harness. “You can do that, apparently. There are rubs and pastes too, but they aren’t nearly so durable.”

Maybe it was the fact that Joshua couldn’t keep his nose out of other people’s business now unless he cut off the damn thing, but he couldn’t help himself. “Sounds like you’re making a friend, Robicheaux. Best thing to do when you’re feeling lonely.”

“Excuse me for the poor manners, but did you not get your fill of tempting fate when you ran up to that gun?” Goodnight said, twisting around to face Joshua. 

He seemed surprised when Joshua shrugged and leaned back and didn’t immediately parry the comment, for a man who was actually a decent card player, even with Billy minding him. He should know you didn’t let people get used to your style. “We’re going to be running together for a few days yet,” Joshua said. “Maybe even longer, if Chisolm comes to his senses. So I’m just thinking—and _smelling_ , and I never was that good at holding my nose in a shitpile—that it’s going to be a damn long ride if I can’t get a clean breath once in a while.”

“I suppose that’s fair,” Goodnight said after a moment, reluctant and a little irritated, but sincere. Then he turned forwards. He glanced at his reins, then back out. “I think Mrs. Martin might object to your insinuations, however.”

“I do wonder what that man sees in her. He seems like a levelheaded type,” Joshua said.

Goodnight looked out at the pair in question, who were deep in conversation, to the point that Argent had to keep brushing the billows of Lydia’s skirts off his horse’s flanks. Neither he nor the horses seemed to mind, despite the fact that quite a breeze was whipping up. Though that might have been down to the kid-gloved hand Joshua spotted resting on Argent’s thigh, in between flaps of skirt.

“Every man has his Calvary, and his savior, or at least, what he appears to think is such,” Goodnight said meditatively. He eased his horse off a few inches from the wagon, still looking straight ahead. “Sam’s not going to shoot anybody, when he gets up again. And he’s going to. I don’t care what they’re putting in his coffee, if it’s water straight from the River of Lethe itself. I know him. The man’s going to get up, and you need to not let him out of your sight.”

“Wait a second. Where did I come into this?” Joshua said sharply.

“When you decided you wanted to follow him down to Hell,” Goodnight said. He dug around in his coat, then pulled out a small pouch of tobacco and some rolling papers. He was good enough to make up a smoke one-handed, his other hand loosely steering the reins and occasionally serving as a makeshift table for the paper. “You were looking forward to it. I know the type, Mr. Faraday—the War cleared out a fair number, but I suppose this country’s conducive to it.”

Joshua pressed his lips together, then wrapped the reins back around his palms as his nails tried to make up their mind whether they wanted to be round or pointed. “I’ll admit to a certain amount of careless curiosity, but I don’t think—and I don’t think _you_ thought—Hell was going to just end up a waystation.”

“And now on the other side of it, you’re a completely changed man?” Goodnight said, raising a brow. He gave his cigarette a last pinch at the side, then hung it from the corner of his mouth while he struck a match. “I’m not shirking my own responsibility in this, in case that’s what you’re thinking. I’ll be watching myself. But it’s going to take more than one of us to keep eyes on him. When he wanted to, Sam could disappear so thoroughly that not even the Indians could find him.”

“I thought you objected to this entire enterprise,” Joshua said, eyeing the other man. “It’s a hell of a thing to fall out over with a man who decided to partner you for a round with certain death.”

Goodnight didn’t even seem to register the barb, drawing deep on his cigarette before letting the smoke stream from his nose. The tobacco made Joshua’s nostrils twitch; he could feel the tingle of it starting in his sinuses, but then the werewolf took over and it went away, and all he had was the harsh smell of it. He might have to start frequenting the porches of saloons if this kept up, he thought. Then grimaced, since a fair number of other things would have to happen first before he could even step back into one. Learning how to handle cards again, for one.

Handling the men he was traveling with, for another. “We entered into a partnership together, as I believe he told you when we first met. Billy takes its obligations seriously, like he takes any other obligation to which he decides to commit,” Goodnight said. Calmly, but his heartbeat was starting to tick up. “Which anyway is not a business in which you have a share. As for my objection, that is because now Sam _will_ leave. He needs to stay till we can dig up exactly what the terms of his deal were, and that likely was going to require some degree of forceful persuasion, but _this_ is not the way to do it. So now we’ve got to scour out the whole damn chimney before we can start anything in it.”

Goodnight nodded to the wagon, then reined his horse in sharply as it started to side-step. Then he and Joshua both looked to the side.

Vasquez shouldered his way through the tall grass, jaw hanging a little so his tongue lapped over his bottom teeth. He nosed his way between the wagon and Goodnight’s—Chisolm’s—horse, looking as if he didn’t have any idea why the horse might be snorting and stamping about it, and then leaped up onto the seat next to Joshua. His goddamn skull cracked into Joshua’s elbow, and between the swearing and the managing of the cart-horse, it was a few minutes before Joshua settled himself again.

By then, Goodnight had spurred his horse ahead and seemed headed to pick up his conversation with Argent and Lydia, while a good two-thirds of the seat was being taken up by a thoughtless Mexican who couldn’t dress himself without leaving Joshua’s ribs marked all over with bruises.

“You heal,” Vasquez told him.

“It still hurts, you son of a bitch,” Joshua said, finally shoving Vasquez back into the wagon.

The other man grunted, abruptly catching himself on the sideboard. Then he shrugged and curled over to pull on his shirt. Rolling his eyes, Joshua turned back around. A wisp caught his eye and he looked at the other end of the plank he was sitting on, then, annoyed, started picking out the bits of fur from the boles in it. 

“Did you _want_ to keep talking to Goodnight?” Vasquez said.

Joshua started to ask what the other man meant, and then changed his mind and looked around instead. It took a few minutes and some concentration on hearing things besides the screeching creak of the wagon-wheels, but he finally pinned Billy down…less than five yards off Goodnight. And Red Harvest had ridden back into view behind the cart. They were both a little far out for this conversation, even taking into account the supernatural.

“Argent wants to make camp in a few hours,” Vasquez added. Dressed again, he decided to sprawl back in the wagon-bed, hands pillowing his head as he watched a lone cloud scud across the sky. “Says it’s better we rest up, and then start again when it’s night.”

“Did someone _explain_ to him what’s going on?” Joshua said. 

“He knows,” Vasquez said, suddenly curt.

“Well, aren’t you the trusting sort all of a sudden,” Joshua muttered, unwrapping the reins from his hands and letting them slip back between his fingers. He pursed his lips, paused as Chisolm’s heartbeat seemed to skip—just the wagon rattling, and then slouched back against the headboard. “I’m starting to think that of all of us, Jack got the best deal.”

Vasquez stirred. “By staying dead?”

“What? No, I meant _Jack_. My horse, Jack. Living it up down south, probably stomped over it so much that they’ll have to change the brand to his horseshoe,” Joshua said. He took in the reins as the ground began to climb, then stretched one leg as his thigh started to cramp. “Though now that you mention it, Horne isn’t doing so badly either. Guaranteed room and board for the rest of his time on this earth.”

“You should come down and run,” Vasquez said. Seriously, by tone and smell and facial expression. “Run. Stop talking so much. You can always come back to do that, you know.”

“Not a chance in hell,” Joshua said, a little too forcefully. He turned a shoulder to the other man’s curious stare and took in more of the reins. “You think I’m trusting you for a second not to drive this cart into a foxhole, you must have lost some of your brains coming back.”

“Foxhole,” Vasquez snorted, and then he laughed out loud. The boards creaked as he scooted further down the wagon-bed, saying something unintelligible in Spanish. But he smelled plenty amused.

Joshua ignored him, and whipped the reins lightly against the cart-horse’s flanks as it heaved against the rising slope. He still thought it was a set-up for disaster, but then, he wasn’t running this one. Or running from it; he shook his head at himself, then sighed and flapped the reins again when the horse slowed.

* * *

By the time they stopped, just over an hour later, the terrain had gotten rugged enough to qualify as foothills, even if the Cascades themselves were still over a day’s ride away. Argent and Goodnight—who seemed to be going joint on leadership at the moment—picked a spot in the shady side of a hilly rocky enough to squeeze out some water into a puddle barely big enough to water the horses and get a pot of coffee going.

They still had hours and hours of daylight left, and between the map Argent drew in the mud by the puddle and his descriptions of their path ahead, the rest of the way didn’t really sound like the kind of trail you’d want to tackle with just the moon to light your way. When Joshua pointed that out, Argent informed them that they’d be leaving the wagon at camp and going on foot and horseback the rest of the way.

“What happened to not putting Chisolm on a horse?” Joshua said, looking at Goodnight.

“This is the end of Erica’s territory,” Lydia answered in his place. She sat perched on a rock, daintily holding her skirts clear of the mud as she pointed back the way they’d come with a bone-handled fan. “She’s not about to let us take her wagon with her.”

“We’ll move all the bags to the horses—she did say we could take the extra for pack—and then lay Sam on one of the boards,” Argent said. “Just like we carried him.”

Meaning Vasquez. He started to straighten out of his squat, frowning, but Goodnight finally decided to join the conversation at that point. “He’s going to wake up.”

“Well, we’ll have to risk it, because between here and the edge of Stiles’ valley is contested and I don’t want to get stuck because of the wagon. You can’t fort up behind one, they’ll just rip it out of the way,” Argent said, exhaling sharply. Half a day of constant conversation with Goodnight seemed to finally be wearing down his composure. “Better to be able to move if you need to. There are four of you, plus they won’t know what to make of Red Harvest and at least some of them probably will know me. If we can move fast enough, that alone might make them hang back till we can at least hit the foothills.”

“Contested by who?” Billy said, having come out of wolf form for the coffee.

“Omegas,” Argent said, just as Red Harvest also replied, “Werewolves.”

Argent glanced at Red Harvest, but the other man didn’t seem inclined to take on teaching duties. “The ones who don’t have packs. This stretch isn’t claimed by any, so they’re free to roam,” Argent finally added.

“Not surprising. Not a hell of a lot out here besides dust, grass, and more dust,” Joshua said, kicking at the ground.

Maybe a little close to Billy, but he just used his hand to wave it away, giving Joshua a flat, narrow-eyed look. Joshua shrugged an apology and Billy turned his attention back to Argent. “Four of us. We’re a pack, they’re not,” he said. “So why are we worried?”

‘Pack’ was stretching a little, Joshua thought, watching as Goodnight regarded his erstwhile partner with something less than complete and utter trust. Chisolm was lying under the trees a few feet behind Goodnight, and he’d been at Goodnight’s back since they’d taken him off the wagon. Billy hadn’t actually made any attempt to object or intervene with the arrangement, but he had spent an awful lot of time staring at Goodnight.

“Well, why do people run into their houses when a rabid dog comes into their yard?” Lydia said. She stared back at them, fan fluttering under her chin. “Werewolves are meant to live in packs. If one isn’t, then something’s wrong with them.”

“That’s what I mean. What’s it going to be this time?” Billy said, his tone getting a little sharp. “They breathe fire? You can’t cut off their head except if you have a silver knife? You can’t keep us in the dark if you want us to help kill them.”

“Nobody’s trying to keep you in the dark,” Argent said, sounding annoyed. “ _You’re_ all better in the dark. And if it’s a werewolf, you kill them like we told you. They’re just going to be trying to kill you right back, and without a pack they don’t have anything you can threaten that they’re going to care about. Makes them more persistent.”

Lydia flipped her fan shut, right as Billy was starting to get a thin, sarcastic smile on his face. She got up off the rock, relooping her skirt over her arm. “I’m sure you think this sounds _exactly_ like every other desperado you’ve ever taken down before,” she said. “And it would be, except only two of you know how to manage your shifts and I’d think men as experienced as yourselves would know better than to be happy about going into a fight divided against yourself. Chris, I’m going to catch some air. It is _stifling_ here.”

Argent lifted one hand in acknowledgement as she walked off. “She has a point,” he said. Seemed a little reluctant about it, but he followed it through. “Most omegas started out in a pack, but left or were forced out. Even if they look rough, if they’ve survived more than one full moon on their own, chances are they can handle themselves. They aren’t going to fight the way regular people fight, either.”

“What the hell does that mean, regular people? Proper dueling rules? I guess they might have included that in Goodnight’s finishing school, but I don’t know that the rest of us ever made it that far,” Joshua said. Then, as Argent started to gather himself up for another lecture, he got up and went over the rock that Lydia had abandoned, which was by far the most suitable spot for sitting with your ass out of the mud, and appropriated it. “So what else are we going to run into besides rogue werewolves?”

“Hopefully nothing,” Argent said after a moment. He was judging, no doubt about it, but keeping it to himself. “You haven’t seen anything, or felt anything or heard anything, since Chisolm went to sleep. Have you?”

Joshua stared at the other man. Argent stared back, then deliberately turned and eyed the others in turn, starting with Goodnight and ending on Red Harvest. Goodnight just pursed his lips, smelling even more like a boiling kettle of anger, but Billy and Vasquez both gave him short shakes of the head.

“You didn’t mention that,” Billy said sharply.

“I told him,” Argent said, frowning at Red Harvest. “I thought you talked to each other.”

“So you were right. The one who wants him, they can know Chisolm like Chisolm knows them,” Red Harvest said, apparently meaning the rest of them. “If Chisolm doesn’t know, then they can’t know. But—”

“If it’s a living person and not a demon, they don’t know anything besides whoever they’re trying to take over,” Argent explained.

Goodnight tensed up, on top of already being a tightly-wound coil. “What do you mean, _take over_?”

“I mean—you all know when he’s upset. You react to it,” Argent said, his voice rising some. Using irritation to cover awkwardness, Joshua thought. “That’s because he’s the reason why you’re werewolves—alphas and betas, they have that connection. So—”

“The _last_ thing Sam would ever let himself be is second fiddle to someone like that,” Goodnight snapped.

“Then why did he make that deal?” Billy said. “He doesn’t seem to regret it either.”

Goodnight turned on him, eyes blazing enough to…that was the werewolf coming out, not just the light, and at that point, Joshua decided that good seat or not, he needed a little distance from the arguing. 

The smell, he figured as he made his way to where they’d piled up the bags, near the tie-out for the horses. Even if he wasn’t interested—and sadly, he had to be—in the dispute, he could smell it rolling off the other men and it got his nerves to jumping the way they had when he'd first started playing cards for his life, and not just for the reputation. But smell was easier to drown out than voices, and just a few handfuls of yards away, he could still hear them but he could at least fill his nose with something else.

When he approached, the horses all raised their heads and Chisolm’s horse in particular seemed less than pleased with the additional company. Joshua raised his palms and got some bared teeth in return, but after some shuffling, they went back to eating. With an eye on him, and God, he missed Jack. That one had been a smart piece of horseflesh, not giving a damn when he didn’t have to. He had killed a man right next to Jack and the cynical bastard hadn’t so much as turned an ear until someone had tried sneaking up while he was still stripping the body.

“You’re coming with the wind,” said Vasquez. Squatting uphill and grinning when Joshua startled. “Even with no werewolves, anyone who knows animals knows don’t come with the wind.”

“I know I generally spent most of my life with better things to do than sneak up on mangy strays,” Joshua snapped. He was still feeling fur—not hair, fur—bristling on his nape, and was sore about it as he bent back down to rummage in the saddlebags. “You can’t find something better to do than follow me around, _amigo_?”

“They just argue about Chisolm. When he wakes, he wakes. We’ll see how mad he is—you can’t know before that,” Vasquez said with a shrug. He rearranged his legs to properly sit, continuing to watch as Joshua, feeling muleheaded, went on till he found half a deck of cards. “When they go back to talking about what might kill us and how to kill it instead, I’ll go back.”

“Very philosophical of you. Life as an outlaw really does wonders for preparing you to accept the supernatural,” Joshua muttered. He kept looking for the other half, but couldn’t find anything. Or smell it, when he thought to sniff one and get to know the ink-scent on it. “Unless you’ve been studying in a convent or something like that, and didn’t tell us.”

Vasquez laughed. “You drive a stagecoach, _guero_?”

Joshua looked up sharply. Vasquez grinned at him, the sunlight whitening his teeth—even square and blunt, they seemed bigger than they should be—and then lifted his hands, flexing the fingers. The man noticed too much, Joshua thought in irritation. He couldn’t just be a goddamn _vaquero_ who got too drunk and too angry after a cattle drive somewhere…

“Well, about two months,” Joshua said, thinking on it again. And was pleased to see he’d guessed right, when Vasquez’s grin faded and the interest in the man’s eyes sharpened. “Just long enough to get to greener pastures. Cheaper than paying the fare, and you don’t have to put up with the conversation inside. Smells better, too.”

No comment on that, though Vasquez was still looking at him. And maybe—Joshua heard his own heartbeat thumping, all of a sudden, and looked down at the cards in his hands. Goodnight had said a couple times that being a werewolf made him feel as if he was fifteen years younger, but frankly, Joshua hadn’t seen much advantage in that. Faster reflexes, all right, but no idea what to do with them, and—he shuffled the cards he had, then cut them, one-handed, and that went all right, but when he tried to turn them again, they caught on nails slightly longer than he was expecting and a few clipped off into the breeze. He grabbed one, was fast enough for that, but…the fact that he couldn’t keep hold of them in the first place. He’d already _lived_ through this.

The noise caught him up, the scrape of rocks against a boot-sole, and he’d half-retreated to the bags before his eyes registered Vasquez on his feet, snatching cards out of the air like a cat swatting down birds. Then Vasquez was ambling down the slope towards Joshua, who took another half-step back and then stopped himself.

Vasquez stopped too, eyeing him. Joshua was figuring on him saying something, given how chatty he’d turned out, but instead the other man silently held out the cards. Joshua pressed his lips together, but decided any other reaction would just be worse and reached out to take them.

“You don’t change,” Vasquez suddenly said. He tilted his head. He was taller anyway, and standing higher on the hill, and now his shadow was running down over Joshua. “It catches you and then you make it go back, but you don’t change.”

“You don’t need to pay that much attention,” Joshua muttered, stuffing the cards back together and then into his pocket. “It’s not going to get anyone k—well, fine, maybe Argent’s right, but if it does get somebody killed, it’s probably just going to be me. And I don’t remember us signing up to be each other’s keeper.”

“I am not _keeping_ you, _guero_ ,” Vasquez said, suddenly up next to Joshua. Smelling like dirt and sweat and blood, live blood, and as Joshua stumbled back from the man, hot-salt-wet taste, Vasquez started to flash his teeth again.

It got Joshua’s hackles up. Not even that metaphorical now, he thought, and without thinking a snarl burst from him. His teeth lengthened and cut into his own tongue, sparking points of pain. Sure, they went away as he wiped at his mouth, but the small red smear that came off on the back of his hand didn’t do anything for his temper.

“How about you help me with some of the thinking around here and figure out what’s eating Chisolm? Or who?” Joshua snapped, stalking back towards the others. “If you’re going to stand around and make smart comments about this like we’re all just studying each other in a zoo. Me, I’m trying to make a goddamn living again.”

He didn’t get a comment in return. When he looked back, Vasquez had his lips tight together, frowning. So much so that Joshua momentarily wondered if maybe it’d just been his imagination, the smirk that had started over Vasquez’s face. Nothing about the other man spoke to amusement now, not even the way he swung higher along the hill as he started following Joshua back. 

Well, hell, nothing about it was remotely relevant to the situation. Joshua caught his fingers in his pocket, running along the edges of the cards, and then hooked his chin to get Billy’s attention. Goodnight had gone off with Argent, talking on the far side of the puddle, and Billy, as was becoming the usual, was watching.

“We have a plan yet?” Joshua called.

Billy shrugged, flicking his nails against pebbles to make them skip into the water. “Same as before.”

“So far, so good,” Joshua said under his breath. “So far, so good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A cooling board is basically where they put dead bodies before civilization developed morgues, since you generally didn't bury them right away.
> 
> A revenant is a type of undead creature that never did come up in TW (as far as I know), so I'm riffing on European folklore and making stuff up.
> 
> In TW, a banshee is a living person who has vaguely-defined powers, including the ability to scream to predict a death (except they're not constantly screaming) and to know secrets (sort of via a kind of telepathy, except not). Anyway, my version of banshee in this universe is closer to The Morrigan than the Victorian Irish ideas of banshees.
> 
> Driving a stagecoach requires very specialized hand-skills, since a driver has to manage a separate rein for each horse, up to six.


	10. Rocks

Being a man had been acceptable, as far as Billy was concerned. He did not have the money or the men or the power to pretend the world was a kind and fortunate place, but he had his hands and his eyes, and he knew how he measured up to other men. But none of this applied to being a werewolf.

It wasn’t even about losing the balance of a throw, he thought as they started out again under a waning sun. That had happened before. Injured hand, black eyes, he’d been without his knives and he’d still managed to force his way to the next town. He preferred knives but he’d killed plenty of men without them and if that was what the future held, that was what the future held. What _wasn’t_ acceptable was that as a werewolf, he didn’t know what he wanted the future to be.

Or the werewolf didn’t know. Whatever it was that crouched in the back of Billy’s head and kept slipping into his skin, trying to wrench his attention to the skitter of tiny paws over a twig or the waft of antelope dung on the horizon, when really what he needed to do was keep an eye on the man right in front of him.

“Keep it even,” Goodnight muttered, cutting his horse nearly across the front again. He reined it just short of stepping on Faraday, who had the other end of the plank they were carrying Chisolm on. “His head keeps beating against the wood like that, he’s going to think he’s back at Gettysburg hearing the cannons.”

“Well, any time you’d like to come down here and take a turn,” Faraday snapped back.

Billy felt a growl rising in his throat, watching the way Faraday’s shoulders squared off, the flicked glance the man gave the space between himself and Goodnight. He looked down at the blanket-wrapped body, then up again as Vasquez came over, offering to spell Faraday.

Faraday conceded the plank’s end with ill grace, and probably didn’t notice the way his stride naturally lengthened into a more-than-human lope as he tried to find satisfactory space between them, Argent and his wife up ahead, and Red Harvest riding off to Chisolm’s other side. It didn’t make Billy feel much better that of the werewolves he had for comparison, Faraday seemed to be the one having the most similar problems. He damn well wasn’t asking that one for advice any time soon, with the way Faraday’s smell went all piss and musk around Vasquez.

He probably should have spent more time with the werewolves back at Reyes’ ranch. Some of them had seemed sympathetic, or at least like the mistakes happening in front of them were nothing new. And away from their alpha, they hadn’t minded talking at all—from the ones he had talked with, they all came from backgrounds not so dissimilar from his own, and were happy to compare notes with a fellow professional.

But they weren’t who Billy wanted to talk to. He’d hold to that, even if the werewolf wanted to change his focus all the time.

“I have a prickling on the back of my neck, and I don’t care much for it,” Goodnight was saying, low and uneasy. “And despite the fact that I can see for miles, and hear for even farther.”

“The wind is coming down over the rocks,” Vasquez pointed out. “That is the only way we can’t see, and if they come that way, we would still know.”

Goodnight nodded absently, but he still shifted in the saddle, to the point that Chisolm’s horse finally got fed up with it and tossed its head a few times. It was more patient than Billy, for all that it let exactly two men ride it.

“Sorry, cher, sorry,” Goodnight said, rubbing his hand over its neck. He stopped twisting from the neck down, but his head still kept moving. “I don’t think this has to do with Sam, that’s the problem.”

“They have bodies,” Billy decided to contribute. “They don’t just run through things like a shadow would.”

Goodnight turned sharply, bothering his horse again, and his and Billy’s eyes met for a second. Then he twisted about halfway back, shushing his horse, as both Argent and Red Harvest cut their horses in.

“Two of them, I think,” Argent said when he’d come up alongside the plank. He pointed at a ridge about half a mile away. “One I think is going to trail off soon, but the other’s been angling down towards us for the last ten minutes.”

“A warning shot generally would be the polite thing to do,” Goodnight said. Then smiled and held up both hands, as Argent started to protest. “Oh, I remember, don’t waste the bullets. I was just making an observation, particularly as that is _not_ the direction I was keeping an eye on.”

Argent looked a little wary, but then Red Harvest gestured at the ridges on the other side. “Further out,” he said. “I think they’re waiting for us to get up into the rocks.”

“Isn’t that better ground for us?” Goodnight said. He started to undo his shirt-cuffs. “Granted, we’ll have to dismount and that leaves you and Mrs. Martin to mind Sam—”

“We should stay on two legs a little longer,” Argent muttered, now looking at the ridges. “And on the horses. You see better than I do in the dark, we want to keep your eyes high.”

Billy had caught the whisk of the brush against the wind on the one side, but he couldn’t distinguish anything on the other. And he didn’t think the way his shoulders were tensing had anything to do with any werewolf instinct; he just was still used to taking cues from Goodnight on how to read the mood. Before he’d met the man, it hadn’t been his job to stay long enough in American society to give a damn what other people cared about. Hadn’t been really his job back in Korea either, to be honest.

Goodnight had been very good for that, even over halfway into a bottle or chasing down the dragon. He could lean against a wall and glance into a room and know in an instant whether they were just waiting for a knock to boil over or whether they were settled in for some fun. He’d gotten a reading on Billy the first time they’d met, when Billy didn’t even know half the English he did now, his slurring, half-incomprehensible compliments sounding just honest enough to keep Billy from slitting his throat.

So generally Billy did put a lot of stock into Goodnight’s opinions, even if he couldn’t see it himself. He just…right now.

“We’re better at night, that’s why you wanted to go over this part now, instead of waiting till daylight,” Goodnight was saying to Argent. “I assumed you meant better at fighting, but you’re the one who has the most knowledge. And you and Mrs. Martin are the only two who know which way we need to go.”

“I wasn’t planning on dying, and if you can see better than me, you can see if we try and run off,” Argent said dryly. He was still watching the ridges. “Night-time is also better because magic works better. They’re wrong when they say ghosts and things like that, they only come at night. In the day’s when they’re going to catch you out, because you end up thinking the sun will do all the work for you and aren’t looking so hard for them.”

Goodnight nodded along but he wasn’t really agreeing. His horse shied again and he pulled sharply at the reins, then cursed as it tried to break into a canter. He got it under control and back alongside Billy and Vasquez, but it took several minutes.

“Is he still sleeping?” Goodnight asked Red Harvest. Then he gave a downwards jerk of his chin towards Sam’s blanket-wrapped body.

“I want to get a little higher before we check,” Argent said, just as Red Harvest made to get off his horse. Both Red Harvest and Goodnight stared hard at him, but he didn’t blink. “Ten more minutes. Up to that overhang. It’s thick enough, nobody with a _body_ is going to be able to ram through it.”

Red Harvest considered the rock Argent meant, then nodded and brought his horse’s head around. He kicked it into a fast trot and was nearly to Argent’s wife while Goodnight was still trying to call after him, and then cruised past her, heading for the overhang.

Goodnight stopped calling after him, then swung down from the saddle. He was fast enough it even took the horse by surprise, and he had to work to take in its reins to the point where he could pat its head. Then, ignoring Argent’s outstretched hand, he tossed the reins to Vasquez, pushed aside the blanket and scooped Sam off the plank entirely, slinging the man over his shoulder as he walked off.

“What I said, it’s true,” Argent muttered, glancing from Vasquez to Faraday, now coming up, to Billy. “Some fights I’d rather have in the dark. You need the moon up to make things work.”

“Well, you’ve got plenty of that,” Faraday said, looking overhead. He finished loosening his shirt, then pulled it over his head and bunched it under his arm. “So, we’re making our stand at the overhang?”

“Give it till an hour or so past midnight, that’s usually the worst of it,” Argent said. “Then we can keep going.”

“Were you planning to sleep at some point?” Faraday asked. “You or your wife? Or do you have magic for that too?”

Argent studied Faraday for a second, then muttered that he’d meet them at the rock and turned his horse away. Faraday snorted in disbelief, and then again as the plank swung a couple inches from him. He jerked aside as Vasquez shouldered it.

“Going to change?” Vasquez said, unbothered by Faraday’s annoyed glare.

“If there’s fighting, probably can’t help it, and we’re away from our benefactress now. Shirt prices are going up, last I heard,” Faraday said curtly. He sped up his pace, not looking back, though every so often he’d twitch at the flap of Vasquez’s clothes.

When Billy walked by him, Vasquez twisted slightly, showing the sling he was trying to tie around the plank with the blanket. Vasquez had already crumpled his vest into it and looked to be aiming for the same with his shirt. Billy shook his head and Vasquez shrugged, going back to pulling at his shirt-collar.

“Horses are peculiar things sometimes,” Faraday said as Billy came up to him. He was looking at Chisolm’s, which had gotten a little ahead of Vasquez since the man was fussing with the plank. It wasn’t yanking on the reins but it had gone out as far as they would let it, and smelled more keyed-up than it had even when prancing under Goodnight. “The faithful hound’s a well-worn proverb, but my favorite story was always the one about the horse who knew its owner so well, when he came back after the War with his right arm gone, it started shying to the left even before he learned to whip it with the other arm. And then one day he went out and something ran up under the horse and it tossed the man to the _right_ , into a tree where he cracked his skull and died.”

“Are you saying you think Chisolm’s horse is going to attack us next?” Billy said.

It wasn’t that stupid of an idea. Reyes had talked at length about how long it took to train a horse against its natural instincts to smell _werewolf_ and flee, and he had noticed how well the horse tolerated all of them, even if Goodnight was the only other one besides Chisolm who could ride it. He was pretty sure Argent had given the horse a few odd looks too.

“No,” Faraday said, startled, as if it _was_ a stupid idea. “I’m just saying—well, what, is that what you think?”

Billy rolled his eyes and broke away from the other man. He slowed up by Vasquez, who was more than happy to hand over the reins, and then started pulling the horse towards the overhang.

“Did I say something?” Faraday muttered to Vasquez behind him.

“I think you should leave him alone, _guero_ ,” Vasquez muttered back. “This does not feel…right anyway. Do you hear anything?”

“Do you?” Faraday hissed, suddenly smelling alarmed. He and Vasquez and Billy walked on in silence for a few paces, and then he let out a heavy breath. “No. Don’t see anything either. I don’t think I do. And I don’t think Sam’s actually awake. But I don’t know, maybe I’m not his best _amigo_ , seeing as he didn’t come collect me special from a mountaintop.”

Vasquez made an annoyed noise. “That only bothers you because you want it to,” he said. “And no. I don’t see anything, or hear anything. Not even in my head.”

They went on for a few minutes, Billy doing his best to pretend the other men weren’t there, and still searching the surrounding land for the eyes he kept feeling. Nothing. He hated nothing.

“Goodnight’s known him the longest, aside from maybe his horse,” Faraday suddenly said. “Think that has something to do with it?”

“It probably does,” Billy said, and then rolled his eyes as he heard Faraday stumble and curse. “At this distance he might still be able to hear you too. It’s a quiet night, and the wind’s blowing his way.”

“What did I tell you?” Vasquez said, snorting, as Faraday continued to curse.

The horse wanted to get to the damn overhang, so Billy stopped dawdling and let it pull him along. By the time he got up, Red Harvest and Argent had a campfire going, and Argent was using it to kindle smaller fires he was nestling just at the edge of the light the main fire threw. His wife was reading a book, her feet propped against a rock near where they’d laid Chisolm down, and Goodnight was…coming down to meet Billy.

“I’ll see to him,” Goodnight said, after a pause probably only the two of them noticed. 

He kept his hand back till Billy started to move his, though after that, he moved as if nothing was out of the ordinary. He took Chisolm’s horse off to where the others were, while Billy, since no one asked him to help, went up to the top of the overhang.

There was a dark, mottled stretch to the north, where the brush turned into real forest, and when the wind shifted he could _smell_ it. Crushed, astringent pine and moist earth, and he didn’t have to look down at his hands to know his claws had come out again. He turned away, looking to the south, then to the east, which had caught Argent and Goodnight’s attention.

Nothing stood out to him. But then, he thought, the man who’d ridden up to Reyes’ house hadn’t either. He had been standing in the dining room with some of Reyes’ pack, listening to Goodnight demand to know what Reyes had shown Sam in the library, and they’d all heard the hoofbeats and none of them had been alarmed. One of them had even explained it to Billy: one horse, only enough steel and gunpowder for a revolver, no wolfsbane and no mountain ash. It almost wasn’t worth checking the magic that protected the ranch, though Reyes’ man had done it in front of them anyway.

“Billy?” someone called.

Not Goodnight, though he was watching as Billy climbed down the rock. Red Harvest, who never used anyone’s name. He was a lot easier to read these days; Faraday didn’t seem to think so, but then, Faraday didn’t even seem to smell himself, or Vasquez. 

The man was frightened of something. Billy had thought it was Chisolm, and then what was after Chisolm, and now, watching the way Red Harvest kept to the other side of the fire, he was starting to think it was Chisolm again. “I don’t see anything.”

“Hopefully it stays that way,” Argent, now cleaning his rifle by the fire, said. “I know it looks like we’re making a big signal light to something, and we are. If the omegas around here can count, and they aren’t too crazy, they should see us and stand off, and then we can get going again.”

“You said no pack’s claimed this stretch,” Goodnight said. He’d taken up a place next to Chisolm, of course. Sitting, but he was curving his back between his knees as if he’d roll onto four feet at any instant. Then he saw Billy looking and his back straightened, knees dropped. “Why is that?”

Red Harvest offered Billy a cup, and then the pot of coffee. It was more of an excuse to scan the landscape over Billy’s shoulder, but he took it and then, ignoring the way Faraday couldn’t help staring, went over to Goodnight.

“Well, it’s not really worth claiming. The game’s seasonal, the watering holes aren’t big enough, and there aren’t many places you could put up a house,” Argent said, blinking a little in surprise. “You still need all the same things that—”

“A man needs?” Goodnight said, with some of his usual barroom humor. He was tensing up with every step Billy took. “A civilized man? And here I thought the rougarou story was supposed to say something about the inherent wilderness in us all.”

“I think you’re the last person any of us would call uncivilized, Goodnight, no matter what you get up to when the sun goes down,” Faraday said, also making as if he was in an expansive mood. He’d gotten cards from somewhere and was carefully dealing them out onto the ground, then picking them back up. Not even trying to make up hands, just dealing them. “Speaking of, how is our fearless leader?”

Goodnight’s mouth tightened and his eyes went to Red Harvest, who was still standing. “You can hear for yourself, Joshua.”

Faraday glanced up, as if they all couldn’t smell Goodnight’s ire, and then raised both hands, palms out. He smiled and scooted back a token inch, and then reached for the cards again, only to notice something behind him. “Hell, don’t tell me…” he muttered, staring at a black-furred clump just behind him “…sleeping? Really?”

“Someone probably should,” Goodnight said under his breath, as Billy flopped down besides him. His shoulder nearest to Billy was twitching like it used to whenever someone let off a gun near him and he wasn’t expecting it. “We’re only stopping for a while. Chris wants to keep moving straight till morning.”

“We should. We have more people but that never stopped bandits,” Billy said back. Chisolm’s heartbeat was good and sluggish, and the smell rolling off him—it went right up Billy’s nose and seemed to worm even higher, a thin but persistent trace of cold that he had to will himself not to sneeze out with all his force. “Sometimes having nothing and seeing somebody with everything’s enough to make you do stupid things.”

Goodnight snorted, then looked over to his other side, where his rifle was resting. “I’m not quite sure what you think they’re seeing, Billy. Then again, I’ve come to understand that we don’t see eye-to-eye on a few things.”

“Just one,” Billy muttered, and when Goodnight twisted back around, he looked away at the fire before their eyes could meet. He put the coffee pot down between them. “It’s not what you’re thinking either. I don’t want him dead.”

“I didn’t, in fact, credit you with such a thought,” Goodnight said under his brath. Seemed about to say more, tucking his chin down, rolling his shoulders up, but he was reading the rest of them around the fire. Red Harvest had retreated back to the horses and Argent had turned to his wife, while Faraday was, with a cautious, furrowed expression, progressing to one-handed shuffling, but they didn’t even fool Billy. “I’d like to sit down and talk at some point. We haven’t.”

Billy raised his brows. His hands were cold. He pressed them together and felt the fur on his palms, and jerked them apart, biting the inside of his mouth to keep down the discomforting twist in his gut.

Goodnight didn’t notice that, just kept on in a calm, neutral voice, with a heartbeat as smooth as a well-trained stage horse’s trot. “We started our engagement with certain understandings, which probably don’t suit the current situation anymore. You keep your word, I know that, so we could—”

“Renegotiate?” Billy grunted. The word felt hard and cold on his tongue, like a little pebble of ice. He’d been expecting it for a while, but when he swallowed, it still caught in his throat.

“It seems like we should,” Goodnight said after a long silence. He hadn’t made any attempt to touch the coffee.

Billy pressed his lips together. He could hear the goddamn fur crawling up his arms, and down his thighs. It rasped against his clothing as it came out and he…he got up and walked around the fire, staring out at the dark again. He wanted to see, goddamn it. He did. He wanted something he could—could _tear_. Knives alone wouldn’t do; he wanted his hands in it, the blood coursing out under his fingers, the stick of flesh against his skin.

He'd killed with just his hands before. He had had to; he didn’t prefer it. Too close, too messy, better to have the hilt cooling between him and his targeting, so he didn’t get too caught up in it. But maybe, he thought a little wildly, maybe he didn’t care about that these days. Maybe _that_ was being a werewolf.

“Have a seat,” said someone. Faraday. Looking up at Billy, who’d ended up near him. Half in shadow but the firelight stuck in his eyes enough to make them glitter. “Got a good hour yet.”

Billy turned and Faraday’s gaze held but his heartbeat jumped. It almost made Billy curl back his lips, but then the wolf curled up at Faraday’s back raised his head. Vasquez looked, then started to rise, and Billy sat down.

“Maybe we should take turns telling a story or two,” Faraday went on, grinning when Argent and Goodnight both shot him irritated looks. “Got a fire going, death on our trail, doesn’t this seem like a good time for a ghost story?”

“No,” Argent said.

“Oh, come on,” Faraday said, grinning even wider. “At the very least, it’s studying up on our current situation. Now, we’ve had dragons—”

“ _Kanima_ ,” Argent corrected under his breath, as his wife laid a hand on his arm.

“—and revenants and werewolves,” Faraday said, warming to the subject. “Oh, and banshees. Now, that’s a pretty good spread, but I’ve been thinking, and I’d like to try out a few others on you.”

Goodnight let out a gusty sigh. “Is this necessary?”

“Well, either we can run me through the ABCs of supernatural things that may try to kill us, or somebody can talk about why Chisolm there can’t remember who in _hell_ he sold his soul to,” Faraday said, smile off his face like somebody cut it off with a knife. He closed his hands over his cards, leaning forward. Behind him, Vasquez was wide-awake, though still lying on his belly. “His horse doesn’t mind you.”

“I’m sorry, but for a moment there I was thinking you were accusing me of being a half-decent equestrian,” Goodnight said, half-disbelieving, half-angry.

“You can sit it and you’re a werewolf. And maybe you can keep up the act better than the rest of us, but you can smell it. I can smell it, they can smell it—” Faraday waved his hand at the horses “—they know. But it doesn’t mind you. It doesn’t mind us either, so long as we don’t touch it, but—”

“What exactly are you saying, son?” Goodnight said, careful, every word pointed precisely.

Faraday had seemed less reckless since his resurrection, but that had just been a temporary change, judging by his current behavior. “How long have you two known each other?”

“Since right after the War,” Goodnight said after a long, wary pause. “He wasn’t riding that horse then, if that’s what you’re after.”

“Not exactly,” Faraday said. He absently shuffled and reshuffled the cards, intent on Goodnight. “I was just thinking. If Chisolm died and the deal he made was to bring him back, well, we’ve seen a couple ways that could go. He’s looking mighty healthy for a revenant, and while I can’t recall seeing him out of his clothes, I think the batwings alone would have been a dead giveaway—”

“He doesn’t smell like either, the revenants or the _kanima_ ,” Billy pointed out. Then paused at the sound of someone sucking their breath.

Goodnight, looking as if he wished he hadn’t given himself away. “He has had that horse for a while,” Goodnight said, a little quick. “And it’s familiar with me, and our smell doesn’t change so much in between forms.”

“It still changes enough that a horse who’s not used to werewolves should be shying and kicking up a fuss,” Argent said, frowning. He started to raise his hand, then put it down. “Are you telling me it—I thought Red Harvest had helped out there. Are you telling me his horse has been fine with werewolves running alongside it this entire time?”

“Did you smell something?” Billy said, talking over Argent. He could feel the way the others were eyeing him, even Faraday, who generally did not allow someone to take away the conversation from him. “Goody. You smelled something. When.”

“I don’t know if I did,” Goodnight muttered, his shoulders stiffening.

“Yes, you do,” Billy said. “You smelled something on him. I know you want to get him through this, but if he’s like—like a revenant, or something like that, where now that there’s four of us someone shoots him and suddenly he’s falling apart because he really did die hanging from a tree—”

“Well, then don’t _shoot him_ ,” Goodnight snapped, surging up onto his feet, eyes glowing, a guttural drag to his voice that seemed to resonate in Billy’s own chest.

Then Billy realized that wasn’t an echo, that was his own growl. His claws were out; his jaw was popping and wrenching, trying to accommodate the fangs growing out of it. He knew Goodnight and the man never, ever was going to kill him, not even if Billy held a blade to his throat, and yet—he couldn’t _stop_ it. He jerked his hands back behind himself but he could feel the fur still running up his arms and down his legs, and—

Sam heaved up into a sitting position, eyes so wide the whites seemed to shine in the firelight. “They’re coming,” he rasped. “I can see them. I can _see them_.”

And then Billy could see them too. Low, dark shapes slinking their way between the rocks up towards a great, bright fireball that crouched and leaped as if it was a living thing itself. They had the scent now, they were nearly there and when they were upon them, the—

He shook his head. Then again, clutching at it to keep the halves from falling apart. At least, that was what it felt like—the world tilted crazily over, then doubled, then doubled again. Then—came together. The world. Out of _his_ eyes, not someone else’s.

“Get back against the rock!” Argent shouted.

“Sam!” screamed Goodnight. “Sam, get back—”

A dark shape rammed past Billy. He didn’t think, just whipped out and tackled it. At the same time, something jumped at them from the opposite direction. Billy had his arms full so he twisted around, jerked up his legs—his goddamn claws jammed inside his shoes. He snarled furiously, futilely, watching it come down towards him. The man he was holding—Chisolm was still trying to get away, and Billy knew if he loosened his grip even a little bit, the man would be off into the night and there’d be no getting him back.

He didn’t even really care, he thought. Chisolm had treated him fine, for a business deal, for the couple weeks that had taken, and that was rare but that was business. He didn’t care but Goodnight did and goddamn it, but Billy had started by seeing how long that drunken, shaky, strange man would last and had ended up thinking at least he’d outlast _Billy_. And then—dying next to him.

And then not dying next to him.

Hell is living, he’d been told back in Korea. So he’d not minded the idea, dying. It’d meant not having to care about what was in his future. And he didn’t mind now, so long as—

“Billy!” Goodnight shouted. Late, but at least he came, Billy thought…and that was when Sam just _twisted_ out of his arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Chasing the dragon' is old-timey slang for smoking opium.


	11. Chisolm

Sam had woken up in a hell of a lot of suspicious circumstances, but sprawled on the ground in the middle of nowhere, a half-wolfed Billy Rocks gasping next to him, all the manner of screaming behind him, and a snarling werewolf in front of him…he didn’t go for his guns right away and he thought that was pretty reasonable. 

Of course, then someone shot over him and hit the werewolf, and at that point, they were damn lucky it turned out he didn’t have any guns.

“Don’t be ridiculous and get back behind the fireline where you’re not blocking my shot,” Lydia Martin ordered. She stepped back, working her gun’s lever, while her husband stepped forward to sweep across the darkness with his rifle.

“She’s got your rifle,” Sam muttered as a wild-eyed Goodnight seized his and Billy’s arms. Then he remembered—he tried to push the other man off, looking back at the werewolf Lydia had just shot. “What the hell—”

“It’s not one of yours!” Chris snapped. “Get back!”

“I _know_ that,” Sam snapped, and then what he’d just said caught up with him.

It was true. Goodnight hadn’t even gotten him halfway to the overhang they were forting up against before he could see that—Vasquez was fully wolf and growling to the left, while just behind him, Faraday was nearly on four legs and only just needing to shake off a few more scraps of clothing. Red Harvest and the horses were crowding the other side of the circle of firelight; with just one arm free, Red Harvest was using a revolver rather than his bow and arrows.

Sam rested on his elbow, staring out at a dark, uneven landscape. Here and there a pair of blue eyes would flash eerily, then vanish behind a shadowy…rock or bush. It didn’t look like the land around Reyes’ ranch. He—

A huge shape loomed up into the air, body broadening unnaturally so it seemed to grow twice the bulk. Chris and Lydia shot at the same time, the impact of their bullets knocking it back so it crashed down just short of the firelight. It—the werewolf was still alive, writhing in pain as it finished its transformation into a man.

Well, maybe not alive. The moment it went limp, its flesh yellowed and the smell was so bad that even Sam picked up on it. Faraday looked as if he was trying not to hack his lungs up onto his paws.

“Revenant werewolves?” Billy muttered.

Sam snorted into his forearm to clear his nose, then pushed himself up. He still felt half-asleep, but hell, maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. Made everything seem calmer than it was—no, that wasn’t why. “Did you drug me?”

Billy looked at him. He had blood matted against one side of his head—the skin under them was healed but Sam could tell from the pattern that it’d been a slash, not a smash. The other werewolf must have hooked a claw across his face before Sam had knocked them out of the way.

“You were going to run off and make another goddamn foolish deal, Sam. You don’t get the devil to leave you be by selling your soul a second time,” Goodnight grunted. He slapped the dirt off his hands, then grabbed a handful of bullets from a half-open leather pouch on the ground. Then he stood up and stepped over Sam to come just behind Lydia. “Ma’am, if you don’t mind?”

“There are plenty of guns in the bags,” Lydia said, finishing up her reload.

Goodnight stared at her. She tracked something for about a foot and then shot it. 

“We don’t have the bullets or the time so if you’re going to sit on a shot, do it with a revolver so at least the bullet will hit _something_ ,” Lydia said.

“I’m guessing he was trying not to shoot me,” Sam said, starting to put it together. His head felt like it was filled with cotton-wool, probably from whatever they’d given him, which maybe was why he didn’t feel particularly…much of anything. “Who’s out there? Is this—”

“Undead werewolves,” Lydia said.

“This land isn’t claimed by a pack, so omegas run here when they’re looking to hide. Probably a lot have died here, and nobody ever really treated the bodies,” Chris said, backstepping towards them. He glanced back, then nodded a quick thanks when Goodnight passed over the handful of bullets. “You don’t, it’s pretty simple to raise them with magic.”

“So this is why you wanted to walk around in the dark?” Billy muttered.

Even over the gunfire—Red Harvest was shooting now—Lydia’s sigh came through loud and clear, especially the contempt in it. “No, we wanted to walk around in the dark because—”

Chris hissed, then shoved his rifle at Goodnight and darted for the horses. He seized the reins—didn’t take them from Red Harvest, just grabbed them—and dropped down to his knees just as his wife stepped behind the fire, took a deep breath, and then _screamed_ till the sky seemed about to cave in. 

It seemed even worse for the werewolves—Vasquez and Faraday fell back, stumbling like they were drunk or had taken blows to the head, and Vasquez nearly toppled into the fire. Sam lunged out and grabbed Vasquez’s back leg, hauling him into Faraday so both wolves topped onto a half-curled, white-faced Billy. Then jumped up again, cursing, as Goodnight tottered. He grabbed the other man about the waist with one arm, taking the rifle with his other hand, and then—

He hadn’t been dreaming. He remembered now—remembered that nothing had come into his head when he’d been knocked out. Not till the end, when someone had been trying to speak to him. Not wake him—opposite of wake him, that had been what they’d wanted. They’d wanted him to stay sleeping, and he’d—woken up. Knew they were being attacked, knew he needed to wake up or some of them would die and he just—didn’t want that.

The scream ended. It took a moment for the body to realize, because the scream’s ghosts hung on into the night air. 

Then the fires started up. Little ones sprinkled across the slope down from their camp, but they were dancing. And then Sam realized the fires were actually burning bodies, lighting up the hillside, while their campfire was completely out. It was as if Lydia had screamed the flames onto the things stalking them.

Chris clattered up on his horse, then tossed the reins of Sam’s horse to Goodnight. “We need to get moving before the fire catches us here.”

He didn’t stop for conversation, but pushed his horse and his wife’s horse on a few feet, till Lydia could swing herself into the saddle. Red Harvest was already on his, but barely managing to control it, from the look of it, while Faraday and Vasquez were still crumpled on the ground. Billy was up on one knee but shaking his head, while Goodnight nearly lost his hold on the reins when Sam’s horse just shook its head.

Sam grabbed the reins from the man and that started Goodnight back to life, his hand snatching towards Sam as if he thought Sam was going to—to run on him.

Well, that had been the idea. And it was probably still on the table, but they weren’t in any shape to run and damned if Sam was going to leave them. He’d gotten them here. He knew that. He wasn’t going to leave them now.

“Then stop it,” Sam said to Lydia. “Stop it. You made it, so stop it. They can’t move, you can see—so we’re not leaving.”

“Sam, look, this isn’t the time—” Chris was saying. “Just get them up.”

But Sam was looking at her. “Stop it from getting here,” he said. “Stop it or I’ll do it.”

Lydia’s eyes narrowed. She didn’t ask him how he expected to do that, she just—she knew, the same way he’d known which werewolf he’d made. And then she turned on her horse, took another deep breath, and screamed again.

This time, she hadn’t come close to finishing before the other sound started up: a series of sharp cracks shading into a thunderous roar. Even in the nighttime, they could see the air get thick with dust as half the hillside just…sloughed off, like a snake scraping off its skin. Sloughed off and took the burning werewolves with it, burying the flames.

Red Harvest’s and Sam’s horses stopped even screaming. They just backed up against the overhang—somehow that wasn’t cracked—and trembled, their heads as low as they could go.

“Well, I hope you’re happy,” Lydia said as the roar finally started to die down. She tucked up her skirts and then dismounted. “We’ll have to _walk_ down now. I spent too long training Worth here to have her break a leg on your account.”

“I appreciate it, ma’am,” Sam said.

Lydia paused, looking at him over her shoulder, then led her horse closer to the overhang. Her husband eased up into the space she’d left, looking at Sam with a mixture of irritation and fatigue. “Look, you’ve got every right to be sore about the drugging, but if you could stop making my wife angry, I’d appreciate it. She told me the whole thing was a bad idea,” he said. He glanced out at the still-settling landslide, then let out a long exhale. “We should just wait till dawn, at this point. She can’t do this when we’re further in the mountains, it’s too hard to tell how the earth’s going to move. So once we start walking, we’re not going to be able to stop till we get to Stiles’ territory.”

“Then why travel in the dark?” Red Harvest asked. This was some sort of ongoing argument, from the way Goodnight and Billy looked sharply at him, then just as sharply at Chris.

“Because if you’re worried about something coming at you through your mind, you sleep during the day,” Chris snapped. He looked at Sam. “None of us can sleep now. _You_ can’t sleep now. That was why I agreed to it in the first place—when we had you under, you weren’t going to dream. You can’t do that till we get there. All right?”

“All right,” Sam said, raising his hands. “All right.”

* * *

It wasn’t in the least bit all right, but Lydia had backed up her husband, once she’d heard, and Sam wasn’t going to argue with a woman who could do that to a hillside, even if once she settled down, she looked considerably more fatigued. Chris would occasionally nudge her awake, then go back to staring out at the darkness.

Once the rocks had settled, Vasquez and Red Harvest had picked their way down the hillside, scraping together bits of timber and brush while Goodnight and Chris covered them with the rifles. They’d found just about enough to relight a campfire, but just the one, which meant they had to all squeeze in together against the overhang. Chris and Lydia had taken up a spot at the one end of it, with the horses, and the rest of them had given them what room they could, which meant they were pretty much elbow-to-elbow.

Vasquez had returned to wolf form as soon as the fire was lit, curling up as near as he could without getting a spark on him. Red Harvest was sitting with him, while Billy and Faraday—who was human, and begrudgingly borrowing Vasquez’s shirt—crowded in next. That left Goodnight to sit with Sam, and Goodnight had taken the spot with a minimum of flinching.

“You can’t just leave,” Goodnight abruptly spat out, about an hour into their wait. He paused, face tensing as the others startled to varying degrees, and then settled in with a grim, determined expression. “I don’t give a damn if that’s what it wants—I don’t _want_ to owe my life to you, Sam.”

Chris was looking over, chin resting easy on the top of Lydia’s head, hand curled around his rifle. He didn’t say anything but he was waiting on it.

“That said—I realize that’s come up before,” Goodnight added, his shoulders hunching. He never could keep those manners of his out of things. “But I think there’s a material difference—”

“So who actually slipped that into my water? Because I know it wasn’t you,” Sam said.

Guessed right, from the way Billy stopped pretending as if he was remotely interested in the pebbles Faraday couldn’t stop tic-tac-toeing. Goodnight was better, and just stayed focused on Sam. “You’re not going to let that go,” he said, quieting his voice. He looked down at his hands, which he had pressed together as if in prayer, and then back at Sam. “I know you. You don’t forget.”

“No. No, I don’t,” Sam said slowly. He looked at his own hands. “But right now, given the situation, it doesn’t seem like the time.”

Goodnight did not look comforted. Neither did Chris, though he eased his finger off the trigger. And while Sam meant what he said, and wasn’t about to start a fight here that he didn’t have to, he…well, he had trusted these people, and they had turned a trick on him. He didn’t feel that inclined to ease their worries. So he didn’t. Besides, with that on all their minds, he shouldn’t have any problem staying awake, he figured.

It was a quiet night after that. Too quiet—Faraday had taken Chris very seriously, and whenever he thought Vasquez or Red Harvest had gone a little too long in place, he’d get up and start whistling his way around the fire. Red Harvest didn’t sleep, from where Sam was sitting. Vasquez might have tried to doze once or twice, but after a couple of Faraday’s performances, he took to baring his fangs at the man.

Once or twice Goodnight tried to engage Faraday in conversation instead, but that never ended well. The second time Faraday growled at Goodnight, Billy shucked his clothing and shook himself into a wolf, and then both of them took to prowling around the fire, in opposite directions.

“Thank God,” Lydia muttered as dawn finally crawled over the sky and they picked their way to ground level enough to allow for riding. “Any longer and I’d scream.”

Faraday looked sharply at her; she ignored him and allowed Chris to give her a hand up into the saddle. Then Chris turned, holding the reins to Sam’s horse. He started to say something, only to hesitate as Goodnight moved abruptly at the side.

“I’m not going to ride off on you,” Sam said, holding his hand out for the reins.

“She’s not going to stop you,” Chris said, watching Sam closely. Lydia twisted around, giving him an odd look, but she didn’t say anything. Chris didn’t look over at Goodnight either when he finally passed over the reins. “If you were counting on that.”

“I’m not asking anything of anybody right now,” Sam said.

He got up onto his horse, then grimaced. He ached all over, deep in the bone. Getting old, he thought, and tried to let his body catch up. Vasquez and Billy, both still wolves, were lingering behind, near Red Harvest’s horse. Lydia had apparently decided to delay taking things up with her husband till later, and had nudged her horse ahead. Chris was staying put, while Faraday and Goodnight were standing to the right. 

“Sam,” Goodnight said stiffly, and when Sam looked at him, Goodnight handed over his coat. Then his shirt, pants, belt, and shoes. “If I could trouble you.”

It almost made Sam smile, seeing how it was going to be. He took the things and rolled them up into a saddlebag while Goodnight stretched into a wolf. Faraday watched, a look of near—but not quite—disgust on his face. Then twitched and glared at something over his shoulder, but all Sam saw was Vasquez sniffing at a bush.

“Hell,” Faraday suddenly muttered. 

He yanked Vasquez’s borrowed shirt over his head, then wadded it up in one hand. Then hesitated, looking between Chris’ and Sam’s horses, when Red Harvest eased his horse up and held out a hand. Looking relieved, Faraday threw him the shirt and then, lips a thin, tense line, slowly dropped into a crouch. He sucked his breath and the fur did start to crawl over his back, but it looked…unnatural. Not the simple twist Goodnight and Vasquez used, or even the violent but quick jerk Billy employed. It just looked like Faraday was forcing it.

“You need to keep in mind something you like,” Chris offered, as if he had tried to help himself and had busted something in the process.

“Yeah, you keep saying that,” Faraday muttered, and then he let out a sharp grunt as his collarbone and shoulders abruptly contorted. “ _Hell_. And—don’t even start, you goddamn Mexican mutt—”

Vasquez, startled, backed up. His tail was even down, just like a chided dog.

“You’re making me hurt,” Sam found himself saying. Faraday’s eyes snapped to him and he couldn’t help a sigh. “Stop _thinking_. It’s not going to kill you, we know that.”

Faraday started to snap something back, something sorer than just injured pride, but in the middle of it, he was a wolf. He staggered a bit, testing his legs, and then righted himself. Then stalked over a few yards, looking pointedly at Sam, while Vasquez circled to the other side. Goodnight retained a position just to the left of Sam’s horse, while Billy stayed back with Red Harvest, ensuring Sam was ringed on all sides.

He’d set up formations like this for more than one prisoner, when he’d had the men for it, Sam couldn’t help thinking as they moved out. Maybe this was part of the deal. The rest of his life had turned upside-down, so that’d make more sense than anything else.

“This valley,” Sam asked when it seemed like they were well-set on their path. “How far’s it?”

“Midday if we’re lucky,” Chris said. He mostly rode up with his wife, but every so often he’d let his horse’s pace slacken till he and Sam were almost level. He didn’t make any gestures like he wanted conversation, but he hadn’t let much time go before he answered Sam. “Before sundown at latest.”

Sam nodded. He let them go a few more paces, then cleared his throat when he saw the haunches of Chris’ horse bunch. “You don’t think it’s a demon, then how was it able to bring me back from the dead?”

“That’s not exclusive to demons,” Chris said after a moment, wary, because he wasn’t a stupid man. “There’s more than one way for that to happen.”

“Yeah. Seen a few at this point. Most of them seem to fall to pieces the moment you stop them,” Sam said. He wasn’t looking, but he didn’t have to look to sense everyone’s ears pricking up. “I was thinking about that.”

“Thinking you’re going to turn out like one of the revenants?” Chris said, glancing at him.

Sam’s horse snorted and raised its forelegs a little higher than it needed to. He tugged at the reins without thinking, then looked down as Goodnight swerved away a bit before loping back up. “You telling me that won’t happen? And that’s not why you’re all so careful about where I am?”

“If you were like that, Lydia would know, because then you’d still be dead,” Chris said, more to their audience than to Sam. “You turning into a corpse might be a little delayed, but you’d be dead. Something like a revenant’s not at all the same as…as your pack, for example.”

Then Chris shut up, brows rising a little as he looked at something. Whether it was in Sam’s face or the way Sam was managing his horse or another thing, the man seemed to have spotted something of interest. 

“What I did with them,” Sam said, not wanting to dig into it. “That doesn’t create something, does it?”

Chris frowned. Then turned his attention to his horse, steering it out of the way as Goodnight seemed bound and determined to run himself under the hooves of Sam’s mount. Sam reined in sharply, then tried to wave off Goodnight without thinking about it, same way he would a stray dog.

Goodnight went off a little, ears and tail raised in what struck Sam as disbelief, while further out, Vasquez let out an odd chuffing noise, recalling a human laugh. When Goodnight whipped around, Vasquez took advantage of a stretch of brush and disappeared behind it.

“What do you mean, create something?” Chris asked.

“Like a—like what happened with me,” Sam said. “Like a debt, or…like if I die, does that mean this gets passed on? You said it’s my pack.”

“Well…it appears that way,” Chris said after a long pause. He wasn’t wanting to have this conversation, it was obvious, but he was the type who couldn’t simply evade a direct question. “But you’re not a werewolf. And anyway, werewolves aren’t—if an alpha bites someone, then they and the beta they make, sure, there’s a bond. It’s strong, but werewolves do leave packs. All those dead ones last night, they all started in a pack. And if you kill an alpha, it’s not as if all the betas that looked to them, they die too.”

“If you kill an alpha, then you become the alpha,” Red Harvest said, joining in.

Chris shook his head slowly. “No, you become _an_ alpha, if you weren’t already one. But you don’t turn into them. If they came with a pack, the pack still gets to choose what to do afterward. Maybe they go with the new alpha, maybe they don’t.”

“So it’s not too different from regular people,” Sam said.

Red Harvest seemed to want to disagree, but he was letting his horse drop back. Chris glanced his way, but didn’t call for the man to come up.

“If you’re asking whether whatever’s after you would also come after the rest of us, I’m not sure you’re concerned about the right thing,” Chris finally said. “It doesn’t have to. It can if it wants to. And either way, if it gets hold of you, I’m personally concerned.”

Goodnight was edging over again. Sam tried to steer his horse so that it was paying attention more to its other side. “I didn’t think we’d ridden that long together.”

“I’m concerned because we _have_ ridden together, and if whatever or whoever it is has someone like you, then _whatever_ it wants to do with you, it’ll be hard to stop,” Chris said, not without a touch of dry humor. He touched his hat when Sam looked at him. “Well, and it’d be a shame, that happening to someone with a record like yours.”

Sam nodded and Chris left it at that. A moment later, he was back in the lead alongside his wife.

* * *

The ground got rougher, and there was no doubt they were in the mountains now. They did have to stop occasionally to rest and water the horses, but per Chris’ advice, they stayed awake. Goodnight turned back to a man and Sam gave him his clothes back, expecting another debate, but instead Goodnight picked up a conversation with Lydia.

Not that he wasn’t keeping an eye on Sam—he’d move around to clear the sightlines to the point that Sam found himself twitching if there _wasn’t_ a Cajun skulking around in the background. “Can’t you distract him?” he muttered when Billy happened to come by.

Billy, who seemed to agree with Vasquez about the easiest way to travel, lifted his head from the rock he’d been sniffing to give Sam a long, distinctly resentful stare. Sam inhaled, actually thinking about what he’d just said. Then he sighed and just held his hands up, and walked back down the creek to see if his horse was ready to go.

He couldn’t stop moving. If he did, he was sure he’d doze off, so whenever they pulled aside he left his horse with Red Harvest and kept himself pacing. Red Harvest was still there when he circled back this time, checking a back hoof on his own horse, but he straightened up as Sam approached.

“I know, I know, don’t mind me,” he said. Just from the way his horse’s head was set, he could tell the animal still needed some time, but he figured he’d finish his loop anyway.

“What are you looking for?” Red Harvest asked in Comanche.

Sam slowed, then came to a complete stop, looking at the other man. Red Harvest looked back, then flicked his gaze pointedly to the left. Faraday apparently was the one trailing Sam at the moment, a good few yards back, while beyond him Goodnight had shifted to Lydia’s other side.

“I’m just stretching my legs,” Sam said. “Not sleeping.”

Red Harvest looked annoyed. “What were you going to look for?”

“When was I going to look for something?” Sam said, annoyed.

“When you left,” Red Harvest said. He stepped away from the horses and came over to Sam, ignoring the irritated noise that Faraday was making. “If we hadn’t—”

“Slipped something into my drink?” Sam finished. “You want to talk about that now?”

Red Harvest didn’t so much as blink. “Yes.”

In all honesty, Sam probably shouldn’t have expected anything else, but it still caught him by surprise. He stared at the other man, who stared back. Then he took a half-step back and happened to catch a glimpse of Goodnight staring their way. The man looked more than half a mind to come over, and that was with Billy pacing restlessly around no less than two yards away, and…Goodnight needed to do something about that, Sam thought. He’d gotten a second life and there was no reason why he needed to waste it.

There was no damn reason why Sam should have thoughts about those kinds of things. Except…he turned back to Red Harvest. “Goodnight means well, but he has this habit of doing good things for bad reasons. I don’t see you as having that problem.”

“He’s right,” Red Harvest said. He paused and a flicker of irritation crossed his face. “Your other friend. Argent. If this thing takes you, we all have more problems. And you don’t know how to keep it from taking you.”

“Well, do you?” Sam snapped. He took a step towards the other man before he could help himself; what finally caught him up wasn’t the way Red Harvest stiffened up, but the sudden, low, rolling growl—growls. 

More than one. When he looked over, Faraday had already shied back, teeth still bared but body curled away from Sam. The one that was still going wasn’t Goodnight, or even Vasquez—who’d leaped up onto a rock and was hunched on it like an owl on a gable—but Billy. Who stopped when Sam’s eyes crossed him, only to turn abruptly and disappear behind a bush.

“Do you?” Sam said, when he thought he could sound a little calmer about it. “Because I was giving it a shot when this all started. I was listening, and trying to do what I was told, and then some magical dead man rides up and shoots Vasquez, and then almost gets hold of Goodnight, and it just didn’t seem to me like we _did_ know what was going on.”

“Cursed man,” Red Harvest muttered.

Sam raised his brows.

Which he didn’t think would actually work, with what he’d seen of Red Harvest so far, but this magic stuff seemed to be the only time Red Harvest ever would admit to uncertainty. “The bounty hunter, he was cursed, not magical,” he explained stiffly. He pressed his lips together, then shook his head. “No, we don’t know what this is, but I know—I know enough to know if you leave, if you walk from what is your doing, you will end up the same as the one who cursed that man, the one who sent him. Is that what you want?”

“Of course not,” Sam said. “But I also don’t want anybody else to—”

“You don’t want to think they’re part of it. You want to think this is something else. But that’s walking away!” Red Harvest suddenly exploded. His eyes were widening, he even slashed his hand through the air for emphasis. “You didn’t want to say those were men you knew in the wolves, you didn’t want to say you heard things—how are _you_ going to know what this is if you are always turning your back on it?”

Sam felt his temper flare again. He took a careful breath, only for Red Harvest to look past him at—probably Faraday—and he spat the air back out before it’d really done anything for him. “Is this the path your elders wanted you to take? Minding some other man’s business?”

“My elders told me to walk my path takes courage. When all the others go to fight the soldiers, when they go to die and not to rot on government land, the one who stays and watches for what might still come is the lonely one,” Red Harvest said hotly. He took a step right to Sam, nearly putting them nose to nose. “He is the one who does not want to be here, the one who does not know how he will die, but he is the one who stays, because he is the one who makes sure.”

“Makes sure of what?” Sam said.

“I make sure what follows you, it does not turn into more curses for the rest of us. You, you don’t even look at what follows you. You must do that before you worry about knowing what it is,” Red Harvest spat, turning away. He flexed his shoulders a little, then loosened his stance and carefully ran his hand down his horse’s leg.

Horses weren’t dumb to men’s moods by any means, and the fact that he was able to have it immediately lift up its hoof said a lot about his skill. When Sam moved, it twisted its head around to look and pulled its lips back a touch.

“Sam?” Goodnight asked, tone as delicate as bone china. He’d come up at some point, eyeing Sam and Red Harvest in equal turns, and at that point Sam realized he’d been answering Red Harvest in Comanche the entire time. “Something we should take an interest in, over here?”

“I don’t think so,” Sam said, moving further back. Then he turned fully towards Goodnight and just caught the man going still, the quick way Goodnight searched his face before settling on his eyes. That old, uncomfortable tug in his chest rose up and he sighed before he could stop himself.

Goodnight knew how to read that and his expression tightened. “Just concerned the two of you meant to have something out,” he said. When he was that kind of nervous, his drawl heightened, like he was trying to loft each word into the sky. “If not, suppose we should get going again.”

Sam glanced at the sun, then sucked his breath as Goodnight started to move away. The other man paused, then kept going. Billy stood about halfway between him and Argent, but not in his direct path. Goodnight walked past the wolf and Billy tracked him for a few paces, then looked back at Sam. Then, still silent, twisted about and trailed Goodnight.

Well, he was goddamn looking now, Sam thought. And then again, turning the words over. He started to suck his breath again, but this time, he used his judgment. Didn’t say what he was thinking of, and just turned around to see to his horse.

* * *

The rest of the journey was long, and hard on the body, but largely uneventful. Once or twice Chris spotted something in the distance and the rifles came out, but whatever it was, it never came close enough to be worth a shot.

“That’s not necessarily a good thing,” Goodnight observed. “We haven’t shaken it.”

“Did you think it was going to get lost?” Billy, who’d returned to human as the slopes had gotten steeper, asked. 

It wasn’t as if he needed the hands to keep steady, no matter how rough the ground was—even Faraday was managing it with ease—but Sam got the impression, somehow, that if Billy hadn’t changed back of his own choice, it would have happened anyway. He kept flexing his hands, claws appearing and disappearing, and if anything, his stumbles seemed to remind him to straighten up and not let his back curve till he was about to drop back to all fours.

“I thought,” Goodnight said, startled and reserved in equal parts. Then he stopped and just looked at Billy.

The conversation had mostly been between Goodnight and Lydia, with the occasional remark by Chris, and this was the first time Billy had entered it. But the way the air between Goodnight and Billy all but snapped—if Chris hadn’t cleared his throat, Sam would have kneed his horse between them.

“We’re just about there,” he said, pulling his horse up.

Thankfully, they hadn’t had to go completely into the mountains, but had just skirted one to come around into a valley entrance. From the hilltop where they were standing, it looked like the kind of near-pristine woodland even Sam generally only got to see in tintypes. No logs floating in the river, no itch of sawdust in the air, and the treeline had no breaks in it for telegraph wires.

“Beautiful,” Goodnight murmured.

There was a scuffling noise, and then a loud, forceful exhale. “Well, look at that,” Faraday said, his stride still a little off human. “Just as pretty as that mountain where you were holed up, don’t you think?”

“It’s all right,” Vasquez muttered. Seemed a little quiet, for him and Faraday, and Sam caught Faraday narrowing his eyes at the other man.

“Wait,” Lydia said, as Billy made to walk by her.

He frowned but stopped. Goodnight started to ask something, glanced at Billy, and then, before the other man quite glanced back, turned towards Lydia. “I suppose we’re doing introductions again?”

“Well, kind of,” Chris said.

He and Lydia were both looking not at the valley, but at a nearby tree. It looked like any other oak, aside from some…there were some scratches on the trunk, a little higher than head-height. And something about them put the wind up Sam’s back.

“Sam?” Goodnight asked, sounding confused under his wariness.

The others were turning too. Sam bit the inside of his mouth and told himself to calm down. “What are we waiting for? It’s only a couple hours to dusk, and if we’re going to get anywhere we can shelter before that—”

“We know that, it’s just his _awful_ sense of humor,” Lydia said in a flat tone that nevertheless vibrated with irritation.

She didn’t mean any of them, Sam suddenly was certain. Somebody moved behind and to the left, but that didn’t bother him—just Vasquez. When Billy sighed and kicked at something on the ground, Sam didn’t make a noise but the other man still pulled his leg up short, turned towards him. Sam pressed his lips together, then got off his horse.

“Sam—wait, Sam,” Chris said, finally noticing. “Look, it’s fine, it’s not—”

“Stop it,” Lydia snapped. “We _told_ you he’s seeing and hearing things, so unless you want Chris carrying your idiot head in a bag back to him—”

The—air shifted. Or…something. Everything still looked the same, and yet something was different, something Sam couldn’t quite put his finger on. The werewolves could—they were all starting and yelping, and as he kept on walking, he could sense Goodnight turning and making a sudden lunge for him.

Except then he was around a bush and there was a man sitting behind it, back against a rock and a book propped up against his leg. He hadn’t been able to see past the bush, so there wasn’t any way he could have known the man was there, and yet for some reason Sam had started out not even thinking someone might be there, then had—felt something.

“Good afternoon,” the man said, closing his book and standing up. He was well-dressed, somewhere in his thirties, with the kind of smile that Sam generally associated with politicians. “Peter Hale, Mr. Chisolm. I was informed of your arrival by—”

Sam looked at the man’s outstretched hand. Neat nails, some tan on the back of it but the palm was pale enough to make many ladies envious. “I thought there were…customs, or something like that?”

Peter raised his brows. “Oh, you mean Erica Reyes, I suppose,” he said dismissively. “I like to think that we can maintain enough standards to not mark us out from civilization when it’s not necessary.”

After a moment, Sam took the man’s hand. Their handshake was middle-of-the-road, to the point that he knew Peter was doing that on purpose.

“So you’re the alpha?” Faraday asked, stepping over.

“No,” Sam said without thinking.

“Absolutely not,” Lydia muttered. She’d also dismounted, and was leading the rest of them as they came up to Sam and Peter, who was now eyeing Sam with…well, he’d been interested, but now he wasn’t hiding it. “Did he get caught up in something again?”

Peter just suppressed the annoyed look that wanted to cross his face. “Why on earth would you say that, my dear?” he said, as behind them, Chris did not suppress his sigh. “Stiles is a busy man these days and can’t be expected to meet every single visitor we have.”

Lydia’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, so you told him the wrong _time_. And you—” she looked left “—you honestly support this?”

That trick with the air happened again, and then a younger man slid out from behind a tree, scowling. He had a piece of string tangled up around his fingers, which he didn’t seem to want people to see. “No, but he made us.”

A woman around his age followed him. The family resemblance between them was clear, brother and sister, but Sam also thought he saw something between them and Peter, who was outright peeved at this point.

“It has nothing to do with my sense of humor, and everything to do with the fact that you waited till the very last minute to inform us that you were bringing _him_ ,” Peter snapped, pointing at….

Faraday looked as surprised as the rest of them.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Lydia snapped back. “He got gambling banned in an Army town, that’s hardly notable.”

“Exactly! In an Army town!” Peter hissed. “What level of incompetence do you have to have to make _them_ come to order?”

“Now, wait a second…” Faraday started.

“And we haven’t even _begun_ on what he did to Cody,” Peter added.

“That one actually went to plan!” Faraday snapped. He paused, blinking, as Peter and Lydia both turned towards him. Then stuttered a little because Vasquez had doubled over, laughing, and for a second Faraday didn’t seem to know which direction needed lambasting. “It did, it was just the day after that had a problem, and—anyway, what the hell does that have to do with anything? You’re a bunch of werewolves who don’t live anywhere near any of those places, and as a matter of fact, I don’t see anything remotely resembling a town here. I think I’d be lucky to even work up a game of euchre.”

Peter snorted contemptuously. “There’s a town. It’s just possible we don’t believe you should see it yet.”

Faraday looked alert at that, Sam noted. “Sorry to interrupt,” he said, before Faraday’s temper could carry him away. And Peter looked alert at _that_. The whole thing with Faraday was just an act. “But I’ve been led to believe that sleeping outdoors at night, at least for me, isn’t healthy. And I’ve also been told that you—your alpha, Stiles, that he might know something about this…bargain I made, some years back.”

“He said,” Lydia started lowly.

“I sent the telegram for him, I know what he said,” Peter retorted, without taking his eyes off of Sam. He was nervous, Sam suddenly thought. It wasn’t just catching them off-guard, or riling someone up, that that act was meant to cover. He was nervous and the thing that was making him nervous was Sam. “Well, yes. We may be able to determine something.”

“Either we do or the thing after him does,” Chris added. “I don’t think we want that.”

“I think if you’re that desperate for excitement, you could always let Derek show you a few things,” Peter said acidly. He studied Sam for another moment, then stepped back and turned slightly to the side. “Very well, this way to your lodgings for the night.”

“Thank you,” Sam said.

Peter glanced at him, long enough to acknowledge, and then walked away without further comment. The other two took a few steps in the same direction, but were still watching the rest of them. 

“Don’t take it personally,” Chris said.

“Because he does this with everyone he finds to be a threat?” Goodnight asked.

“Everyone he thinks Stiles shouldn’t bother with,” Lydia answered. She looked them all over, then sighed. “He is right in that we do try to maintain certain standards. You should dress before we go any further. Laura, did you happen to bring any spare clothing with you? We had some losses on the way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In TW they make some noises about needing to make sure werewolf bodies are disposed of properly, or else bad things happen. This has some basis in Eastern European folklore where werewolves and vampires were more like different stages of the same monster (if you died a werewolf and your body wasn't handled right, you could come back as a vampire), but in TW was more of an excuse for them to constantly retcon dead villains coming back, because apparently they couldn't think of new ones. Anyway, I have a personal theory that this is why TW hunters chop werewolf bodies in half, since that makes it hard to resurrect.
> 
> Also in this universe, the Hales all have varying degrees of magical abilities that are separate from their status as werewolves. This includes the ability to camouflage themselves and create illusions.
> 
> Army outposts in the old West were pretty notorious for having dives and gambling halls and all sorts of vice districts springing up around them, since soldiers came with that rare thing, a regular paycheck.
> 
> Peter's a former conman. Not necessarily of the cardsharping type (I do remember Faraday taking advantage of everybody fleeing the saloon to swipe the pot) but enough to have a professional opinion about Faraday.


	12. Vasquez

The Hales, they were called. Some of them, anyway—the two men and one woman who had met them at the border. Alejandro gathered that Peter was the uncle of the other two, and was more or less the leader when Stiles was not around. Derek was the other man, and Laura the woman.

And there were others. A light-furred werewolf who flicked over the edge of a ridge as they made the way into the valley, but they couldn’t be the only one. It didn’t _feel_ like just them—Alejandro couldn’t see or smell or hear more, but he kept trying to find more anyway.

“That’s the Nemeton,” Laura said, catching him at it. She paused to hike her skirts as she walked over a muddy spot, then looked at him. “They told you there’s one here, didn’t they?”

“If by ‘they,’ you mean the very hospitable Miss Reyes, then there might have been some talk,” Faraday said, pushing up behind the two of them. “Something about a man-eating tree?”

Laura moved a little to make room. She was interested, but it wasn’t really that strong; she didn’t smell annoyed like her uncle, or startled, or much impressed. She just seemed to be wondering what Faraday was up to. “Well, that’s kind of a way to talk about it,” she said with a slight shrug. “It does need a lot of blood.”

Faraday’s stride slowed for a second. “What, that wasn’t a joke?” he said. “It really eats people?”

“It’s not like an _animal_. It’s very powerful, and like many such things, requires certain compensation for its favors,” Peter said, glancing back at them.

“You’re going to make him think we toss it babies at night, uncle,” Laura said, flashing a wide smile. She was an attractive woman—not so flashy as Lydia or Erica was, with her looks, but when she smiled, her eyes warmed like sunlight through molasses.

“So what do you toss it?” Alejandro asked.

Peter was still watching them, despite the best attempts of Lydia to keep him arguing with her, but Laura didn’t seem concerned about it. “We don’t toss it anything. We bleed game out over it—you’re going to do that anyway, and you don’t need to make _that_ much blood sausage,” she said cheerfully. “Sometimes someone’s stupid enough to cross our border without asking, and then it gets angry and buries them, but I never thought of that as eating. We usually have to pour extra blood over its roots after one of those times, actually.”

“Buries?” Alejandro said. “This is a tree that can walk?”

“Oh, no, I meant that roots come up from the ground and—” Laura made a cupped shape with one hand, then pushed it sharply down “—then the body’s gone.”

“How convenient,” Faraday muttered. “Don’t even need an undertaker with that kind of clean-up. I’m surprised you bother to even dress for visitors if it’s that informal.”

Laura raised her brows. Her brother had been paying attention and now he started to come over…and then had to pull up as Red Harvest suddenly slid up on Laura’s other side. 

“This is an oak?” Red Harvest said. “They did not say that.”

“The Nemeton?” Laura said. Both she and Derek seemed to be immune to whatever trick Red Harvest had for fooling werewolves, and she hadn’t startled at his appearance. She did seem surprised at the question. “Yes.”

“And the blood, you put it on the roots,” Red Harvest went on, intently enough that her brother stopped paying attention to Faraday. “Not the trunk or the branches.”

Laura tilted her head, still interested, but cautious. “You know much about them?”

“I think we call it—” and then Red Harvest said something unpronounceable. He dropped slightly behind Laura as his horse paused and tried to nip at a bush, then stepped back up once he’d tugged on the reins. He’d kept looking at Laura the whole time. “This tree, it looks after things, but…it looks _in_ you, too. If you don’t give it the blood?”

“Well, that’s so wonderful, he’s finally got someone to swap stories about how everything magical is going to end up killing you,” Faraday muttered at Alejandro’s elbow. “Must’ve been dying for conversation after Sam.”

Alejandro glanced at the other man, even though Faraday smelled so thick with irritation you didn’t need eyes to keep track of him. “Better than you giving that one—” he nodded at Peter, who was still not giving Lydia the attention she wanted “—another reason to not like you.”

Faraday snorted. “Hell, I never did anything personal to him. _You_ , on the other hand…and he does strike me as a family man.”

“Me? What did I do?” Alejandro said.

The irritation turned to anger, needling at Alejandro’s nose. He huffed it out, still looking at Faraday, and the other man abruptly turned away. His left hand was flexing, the nails shaping and reshaping themselves. 

Just then Sam pulled up short—and he was the first to do so, even though Peter was so close behind that Alejandro thought if he’d still been just a man, he wouldn’t have caught it. He was looking off to the side, and when Goodnight stepped back to reach for the rifle holstered on his horse’s saddle, he put his hand to block it.

Goodnight frowned but lowered his hand. Then snapped his head over as Peter sighed. “ _Please_ don’t be an idiot, that just annoys him, and we can’t use the Nemeton to clean up _every_ time.”

Sam glanced at Peter, but didn’t respond. Then they all went back to looking at the woods.

Nothing happened, for long enough that Faraday started to scuff the ground with his foot and even Billy sighed. And then a man walked out of the woods, head cocked to the side. He _looked_ a little younger than Derek and Laura, but something didn’t quite…Alejandro found himself pivoting to keep facing the man as he came towards Peter and Sam. He was on the slighter side, with no visible knives or guns, and dressed down compared to the others; only Peter was dressed to match Lydia, but Derek had a vest on. This man just had his shirt, and it was half-untucked with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows.

It was how he moved, Alejandro realized. He didn’t stroll or saunter or anything like that; he didn’t seem to use any kind of extra movement at all, nothing with personality in it. He moved so little that Alejandro thought if he blinked, it’d be as if the man hadn’t needed to move from one place to other but had just appeared there.

“Hi,” the man said, stopping in front of Sam. He gave Sam a measured look up and down, then inhaled. But instead of speaking, he stuck his hand out. It was awkward— _human_. He’d changed how he was moving. “I’m Stiles.”

Sam took the offered hand and shook it. “Sam. Sam Chisolm.”

“Oh, yeah, well…full name’s Stiles Stilinski, but that’s a mouthful,” Stiles said, with a quick, rueful grin. He shifted on his feet, then jiggled his arm as the handshake ended and one of his sleeves started to unroll.

“He doesn’t smell nervous,” Faraday suddenly hissed at Alejandro.

Stiles looked over, before Alejandro could elbow the man because they all had noses good enough to notice that, and then grinned again. Bigger, more confident, and that was what made Alejandro’s nerves tighten the most, he thought: the way the man slid so easily from someone who might pass you on the street anywhere to—to someone who wasn’t only human and who was letting you see it, on purpose. It wasn’t showing off, like what Erica had done; it was like taking clothes off and seeing what was underneath all the time.

“So I’m the alpha, and Peter likes to make it sound like I hate visitors, but it’s fine so long as we know who it is and why they’re here,” Stiles said calmly, turning back to Sam. “So you know why you’re here?”

Goodnight inhaled like he was going to say something, even before someone introduced him, but Sam moved first, edging between them. “Coming to see what you know about this deal I made to come back from the dead, which looks like it’s catching up with me,” Sam said. He hesitated and Alejandro got the idea he was thinking about looking over his shoulder. “How to keep it off.”

“You can’t really keep those kinds of deals off, you just have to face up to them,” Stiles said. Then glanced past Sam as Goodnight didn’t _speak_ , but still said plenty with his face.

“Look, I’m—new to all this,” Sam said, putting his hand out. It was his turn to glance over as Peter made a slight move, then pulled himself up, looking at Stiles. Then he stepped back, shaking his head. He smelled frustrated. “There’s a lot I’m catching up on, so maybe I’m not saying it right, but I’m trying to deal with this. I want it to—whatever I did, I know I did it and I’m not looking to pretend I didn’t, or to make it like I didn’t. I’m just looking to figure what I have to do to—move this along. All right?”

Peter rumbled in his throat, a low, ferally threatening noise that didn’t match up with his fancy tailoring. Stiles took a step over to him and put one hand on his arm and he stopped, but not before they’d all started to square up.

“Yeah,” Stiles said, watching Sam and not the rest of them. He tilted his head, considering, and then nodded. “Yeah, all right. And good, because the way you feel, you were going to have to sooner instead of later anyway.”

“Feel?” Sam said, startled.

Stiles waved his hand, then half-turned and started to walk away. He took Peter with him, and the man clearly didn’t mind it. “We’ll talk about it once we’ve got you up at the house. Come on, we don’t have that much time left before sundown and I want to get you set up with the Nemeton tonight.”

* * *

‘Setting up with the Nemeton’ meant having them all stand in front of an oak tree as thick through the trunk as Horne and press their palms to it for a moment. It didn’t involve blood, but as Alejandro yanked his hand back, he thought slashing a finger and dribbling some might have felt better.

Good dinner, a real bed to sleep on, and he should have been fine, but the cold feel of the Nemeton’s bark keep floating through his mind. It _sank_ into him, got into his dreams, and he didn’t like that. Having Sam sometimes flash his temper—that felt different to Alejandro. It was in his head but it still felt like he was feeling someone else. He didn’t get confused about it the way that the tree—and he knew it was that—seemed to want him to do.

He rolled around till a little before dawn and then gave up and got out of bed. Went to the door and thought for a moment, then retreated back; Stiles’ pack lived in a little cluster of houses, with the largest one nearest the Nemeton. Alejandro hadn’t been interested in that, even if that one was where the kitchen proper was, so when they’d been picking lodgings, he’d opted to go with Derek to the man’s two-room cabin further out.

Derek was still sleeping in the other room—maybe. His heartbeat had picked up when Alejandro had gotten up, then slowed, but not quite that slow. Anyway, Alejandro didn’t want to run into him, so he retreated to the window, which thankfully didn’t face the tree. 

The fresh air helped. He stood at the sill, hands on either shutter, and for a couple seconds he just breathed. Then, thinking about it some more, he stripped himself, shifted into a wolf, and hopped outside.

He _did_ like being a wolf. He didn’t think he’d ever confuse it with being a man—all the things Argent had said about forgetting yourself, or liking the wolf more, he could see some of that in the others, but it just didn’t seem to come up for him. When he was a man, he was a man, and when he was a wolf, he was still Alejandro.

And it felt good, stretching his legs and then dropping into a sweet-smelling patch of ground and rolling around in it. Dead leaves crushed up into his fur and the resulting dust did itch, but in a good way, and when he stood up and shook himself, the powder came out and his skin felt less grimy. He thought he smelled better too.

Alejandro paused. Lifted his head. 

Nothing, so he turned his nose into the light breeze and inhaled deeply. Water.

He could drink, he thought, and he made his way to a nearby creek to have his fill. It was cooler here, and if he’d been plain human, he probably would have hated it. But the fur made him warm, and predawn light was starting to come through the trees, making him warmer, and he thought why not and slid into the creek. The water came up to his belly, then his breast, and then—

His paws landed on nothing and he went head-down into it, because for a moment he wasn’t sure how you swam with four legs. He thrashed and twisted and his backlegs got onto the bottom again, and he pushed up his head in time to hear someone snickering.

“Well, what, you can’t honestly expect me to respect you when you look like somebody drowned a hairbrush,” Faraday said from where he was standing on the bank.

Alejandro put his paws down, carefully, and then stood all the way up. It had gotten deeper, but not that much; his head easily cleared the water. He looked at the other man, who looked back like he expected more, and then turned around.

“Oh…come on,” Faraday said. “You can’t just—Vasquez, I’m trying to have a conversation here. If you’re going to keep up the bad manners, it’s not going to be my past adventures that get us thrown to that tree.”

The creek got considerably deeper just a little further out, enough so that Alejandro did have to tread water to keep his head up. Which seemed to work a lot better than when he was a man—he hadn’t been by big rivers since he was a child, so swimming didn’t come up—and he was pleasantly surprised at how little effort it took for him to move forward. He went across the creek once, while Faraday’s curses trailed off, and then came back to find the other man looking surprised.

Then Faraday wiped that off, quickly replacing it with what was coming to be his usual irritation. “You going to make me talk to you like this?”

If he meant himself, well, he hadn’t bothered with a shirt, just pants and his gunbelt doubled up in one hand, but he didn’t look that cold. No goosebumps on his arms. And if he meant Alejandro—mid-sigh Alejandro arched himself back to a man. “It’s the middle of the night, _guero_. Why are we talking anyway? You should go back to sleep.”

“It is clearly _not_ the middle of the night,” Faraday said, his eyes widening. Then he shook himself, doubling down on the annoyance. “And we’re talking because Sam and Goodnight and the rest of them aren’t listening in, and I want—I was going to suggest we have a serious discussion about what’s going on, but if you want to go doggy-paddle in the water instead of figuring out what might literally be trying to eat Chisolm, then by all means…”

He waved his arm at the creek. Alejandro sighed again, then put one knee down and straightened up. “What is trying to eat Chisolm?”

Faraday gaped at him, then twisted away with an irritated huff. He glowered at the other cabins—three small ones, then the large main one—muttering to himself about only sanity and lazy Mexicans and he was, in the stillness of the early day, very loud. Too loud to tune out, standing there, and yes, Alejandro knew they had work to do, but he had still been enjoying himself. He did not get to do that often, and Faraday was—

“Oh, now wha—” Faraday said, twisting back, his voice rising with both alarm and exasperation. He slowed down as he saw Alejandro had gone back to wolf before coming out of the water, then froze in place when Alejandro planted his legs and dropped his eyes. “Oh, no. Oh, no, you’re not—”

He was not going to _shoot_ him, Alejandro knew, not with how the gunbelt was already swinging up into a throw. Alejandro sneered at the man, then shook himself off. Repeatedly.

“You son of a bitch,” a damp Faraday said faintly, a moment later, still staring at Alejandro. 

He inhaled as if to say more, then turned his head as if to go. Then did neither, but instead dropped the gunbelt—which he hadn’t thrown after all—and put his hands on his hips, exhaling. Then jerked them off, wincing when the emerging claw on one caught at his pants. 

“Funny, right?” he snapped at Alejandro, abruptly turning back. He showed his fingers. “Funny this keeps coming up for me and not you. Right?”

Well, it was, Alejandro would be honest about that. And it was also strange, that it was taking Faraday so long to get it under control. He was smart and even with all his complaining, he noticed things others did not. And also this did not seem that hard, for someone who could pay attention and then put together what he saw.

“Oh, for…” Faraday gave his hands an irritable shake. Then looked at them, his upper lip curling when the nails still looked pointed. He breathed in sharply, glanced at Alejandro, and then—stripped himself in short jerks, kicking the trousers away, and stalked into the creek.

Puzzled and wary, Alejandro followed the man up to the water. Faraday hissed and shook his limbs a little, taking the cold worse than Alejandro had, but then he stopped when he was waist-deep and just frowned down at the water. He pivoted slowly in place.

“I can feel my balls shrinking,” Faraday said.

Alejandro changed back. “Better with fur,” he said.

Faraday’s eye had been caught by the motion and he was already looking over. He frowned and even the creek couldn’t dilute the stinging anger scent on him. “Easy for you to say. You slip in and out of that like it’s an old pair of boots.”

“It doesn’t hurt,” Alejandro said. He rested his arm across his knees, squatting since it was muddy enough he didn’t care to put one down. “Does it?”

“What?” Faraday said, though from his expression, he didn’t need to.

“Hurt,” Alejandro said after a moment. He paused, then slowed his voice. “Does it hurt, when you do it. Is that why you don’t like to?”

Faraday pressed his lips together. If he’d been the man before Rose Creek, he would have joked it off, or at least pushed it forward, always letting the aggression come to the front. After Rose Creek, he smelled as angry as he’d seemed, under the brash humor, but he kept it in. Like he did now, shaking his head and not looking at Alejandro as he—his left shoulder jerked unnaturally high up and his pained hiss broke the seal of his lips. Then it dropped down, water suddenly rippling up around him as something happened under it. His lips peeled back and he jerked his head down, and then he was a wolf.

It didn’t last long, just till he had walked mostly out of the creek, and then he writhed back into a man. “That answer it for you?”

Alejandro moved his shoulders in a non-answer. “At least you did not shake on me.”

Faraday looked disbelievingly at him. Then—the anger dipped suddenly, like a knife had stabbed through it, and Alejandro sensed that before he saw the fur crawling back up the man’s legs and he tackled Faraday.

“What the—goddamn it, Vasquez!” Faraday swore, kicking and even trying to bite Alejandro.

Then he went to wolf again, much faster. His shoulders smoothed themselves out of Alejandro’s grip and he eeled himself forward a step, but Alejandro had changed himself and jumped on his back, using sheer weight to bring him down. They rolled over, bits of fur wafting by their heads as Faraday scrabbled and bucked. He tried biting again, but his teeth had barely closed over Alejandro’s foreleg when Alejandro shifted back to a man, and his suddenly-thicker forearm startled Faraday into opening his jaw.

Still raked the skin open. Alejandro caught his breath, watching it knit back up under the ribbons of blood, as Faraday let out a strangled huff and then also was a man, back pressed up against Alejandro. 

“ _Shit_ ,” he muttered. Then, tense as iron: “You started it.”

Alejandro jiggled his arm a little. He still was wet enough that the blood was runny, and most of it shook off. The skin under it had already healed. “You change quicker when you want to.”

Faraday sucked his breath. Started to make a short, curt noise, twice, and then he threw out an elbow and dug it into the ground and levered himself enough away that he could turn and glare at Alejandro. “Look, if you have this all figured out already, why don’t you go and show me how to do it?”

“I…was?” Alejandro said, blinking.

“You’re a goddamn—” Faraday started heatedly, only for his scent to change halfway through it. He smelled it too, flushing, and then the anger, again.

Alejandro grabbed the man’s elbow. Just held it, watching the other man’s face. Faraday knew the scent trick, had been working on it. He had been working on all of it, just complaining to try and cover that up, because he couldn’t stand for people to see him work. That was Alejandro’s guess.

He leaned in. Faraday got his other hand up but then pulled it short of hitting away Alejandro’s head—his claws were out again and he’d noticed, and he didn’t seem to like seeing those draw blood—and Alejandro dipped his head, right to Faraday’s collarbone, and sniffed. Then again, longer and deeper.

“What the hell,” Faraday said in a flat, brittle mutter. 

Alejandro smelled him again, twisting slightly as he realized the scents were changing whenever they moved. Sweat and oil coming out of the skin, mud getting crushed under them, the rocks in the mud scraping a little skin off so the blood came close.

“So do _you_ ,” Faraday suddenly spat, before sniffing as if he needed the other mountain to hear it.

“I know,” Alejandro said. He glanced up. “ _You_ knew.”

“I—” Faraday started, and then he shut up and stared at Alejandro, working his lips. Overworking them, they were bruising and Alejandro could smell that too. Then they pulled back and Faraday was showing his teeth, not friendly. “The hell I knew, I knew you were chatting with every pretty woman who could go running with you at night and having fun with this and the hell I knew, I’ve known men who’ll call you out for going to hell for fun upstairs when they’re downstairs writing down whose bodies are going to pay their fortune—”

He moved—away, at Alejandro, it was impossible to tell. Alejandro pulled on his arm, not thinking beyond just stopping it, and Faraday’s breath whistled as it rose up between them, hot streaks of it coming over his teeth, ones Alejandro could almost trace with his nose, they were so heavy with scent. Still angry, Alejandro was thinking as Faraday crushed their mouths together.

But not just that. If Alejandro pressed hard enough, far enough, he got the other. He had the better angle and the mud helped too, sliding Faraday onto his back as he dragged on Alejandro’s arms as if they were personally obstructing him. Their mouths jarred apart, Alejandro’s slipping onto the man’s jaw, but—taste and smell, they were close, and if he pressed his mouth to the other man’s skin, as open as he could have it, pressed and sealed his lips and sucked and he got the air up the back of his throat into his nose. 

“What—the hell—” Faraday hissed.

The noise came from Alejandro without him thinking. He didn’t honestly know he’d made it, at first. Not till he realized that was his chest the rumble was shivering behind. He was too busy dragging his way across Faraday’s jaw and throat, seeing if he was right, because if he was then the anger should get weaker and so far he was.

Faraday hissed again, his fingers coming up to Alejandro’s shoulders. They dug in, hard, and then Alejandro felt sharp pricks all along the tops of his shoulders. It hurt, maybe. He twisted into it and some of the pricks turned into cuts, hot little lines that stung when Faraday’s sucked curses hit them. Too hot, Alejandro twisted again, thinking of the cool water, and Faraday made a desperate, inarticulate sound and then it was _hot_ , his tongue, hot drawing across Alejandro’s knitting skin and he arched up as the heat shot all the way down to the soles of his feet.

In the mouth. He smelled it there, and was licking after it even as Faraday tried to say something. Faraday gagged a little, which knocked at the edges of Alejandro’s mind. But then the other man was kissing back hard, pressing his forearm like a bar across the back of Alejandro’s head to keep him in place, and Alejandro forgot about it.

They rolled over again at some point. It was hazy now, with the heat. Maybe the brief, soft-rough sweep of fur down his palms as he dragged up to Faraday’s back was real, maybe not. The taste of salt coming up under his mouth, that was real—it pressed out under his tongue as he worked behind Faraday’s ear, in the hollows of the throat, down the line of the spine. Blood was real too—the smear on a large flat rock with one sharp edge that’d gashed him as Faraday, outright growling, had hooked Alejandro’s leg as he’d hunched over the other man, sucking and licking and lapping at shivering skin, and hauled him around. 

He'd thought about the blood on the rock for a second. It was his, and he thought—but then Faraday’s mouth was on his cock and he could _taste_ that, he thought instead. Digging his own head between Faraday’s legs, pushing his tongue to bloom the blood right under the skin and if he pushed hard enough, he thought he could taste it pearl into his mouth. The skin was thinner, on the cockhead rounding itself against his tongue. Thin enough he didn’t have to push so hard, could just lap and lap and lean his head against the trembling thigh and when he lapped it’d fill his mouth and nose with all that he needed to know.

“Shit,” Faraday mumbled. 

The word dragged out of him and a little up between Alejandro’s thighs. When he twitched at the feel, Faraday’s hand tightened on his hip at the same time a trickle of sweat ran along the edge of Faraday’s groin, where the wiry hairs faded, and he licked at it. Faraday shivered all over, stirring out more trickles, then grabbed Alejandro’s leg with both hands as Alejandro hunched up on one forearm, intent on them.

“ _Shit_ ,” Faraday said, more pointedly. “Just—”

Alejandro looked up the length of the man’s back. Faraday looked back, still breathing hard, then pushed at Alejandro’s leg. Swung his own legs away, working them under himself so he could crawl over Alejandro for the creek as Alejandro turned.

“Well, if you want to eat mud, don’t let me stop you,” Faraday was muttering as he cupped his hands into the water. He lifted it to his face, hesitated, and then rubbed it over his mouth instead of drank it like he’d initially seemed to want to do. “Seems like they’ve got enough for even your stomach, but hell, you were up in that cabin long enough, I can’t tell what you—”

“You always talk when you don’t want to say anything, _guero_ ,” Alejandro said. He was…not worried, he thought. But keeping an eye.

Faraday wasn’t leaving. He twisted right back around, his face as if he was trying to work up to a scowl, but the way exhaustion flattened out his smell…he stared at Alejandro for a few seconds. Wiped at some of the mud on his legs, not looking at what he was doing.

“You talked a lot,” he said abruptly. His smell spiked irritably when Alejandro frowned. “I had no idea what you were saying, it was all Mexican, I think, but you were talking all the goddamn time. To me, you were talking to me, and—”

“When you were a wolf?” Alejandro said, finally understanding. Then paused, because now he was worried. Faraday wasn’t looking that way but the way the man shifted his legs under himself, the arm he twisted—he could jump across the creek. It wasn’t that wide now, with what they were. “Not now, but—”

And then Faraday slumped. Snorted, and looked down at his hands. His nails were blunt. “Yeah, yeah, before, when Chisolm’d just done…whatever he did. You had it easy, you know, you knew what you were going to come back as. I was—it took a while to just figure out what the hell I was in. And—I’ve gotten drunk. _Drunk_. All right, I never really indulged in laudanum, or that stuff from the railroad camps, at least that I knew of, but I didn’t know my right hand from my left and I _still_ knew which way to get out, and…”

Red Harvest telling Chisolm that they needed to be themselves, Alejandro thought. 

“I started thinking. You were talking so goddamn much, I couldn’t get a moment’s peace, so I had to,” Faraday said, shooting Alejandro a look. It wanted to pin on something but it was hard to tell what the man was trying to aim at. “I knew I wanted back out, but I didn’t know the way, and—and you keep asking me if it _hurts_.”

“Well, you know now, don’t you?” Alejandro said.

Faraday let out a short, airless laugh. “Sure,” he said. “Sure, but also, I know that you can _not_ know how. Which you don’t.”

This was true, and Alejandro nodded in acknowledgment. “But you heard me, even back then. So you forget it now and I can tell you.”

For a second he thought Faraday was going to jump the creek. Then the man settled down. Barely, his shoulders jerking a little with every breath. “Right,” he said. “I’ll just wait for some Mexican outlaw to talk me out of it.”

“First, I am dead now, so I think the bounty is gone,” Alejandro said. “Second, why not?”

“Well—why the hell did you in the first place?” Faraday snapped. “You could’ve just ridden off, but what, you wanted a pet wolf?”

“I wanted you to talk, _guero_ ,” Alejandro said, annoyed. Maybe he should have tried to calm down first, but sometimes, no matter what, the man got on his nerves. “Which is stupider than a pet wolf, because what you talk about—”

“What about it?” Faraday said. Sharp. Then he twitched like he was going to get up, like maybe he thought _Alejandro_ was going to leave, except Alejandro hadn’t moved an inch. He paused, balanced on one hand, and then slowly settled back. Then, even more slowly, the corners of his mouth curled up. “You _like_ my talking. You missed it. Admit it, _vaquero_ , I’m the most exciting thing that ever happened to you.”

Alejandro rolled his eyes, then laid back on the ground. The rocks were starting to indent his elbow. “Yes. After the bounty, and Rose Creek, and the dragon…hmm, no, the dragon before Rose Creek, I think…”

He stopped, looking at the man who was bending over him. Faraday wasn’t smiling anymore.

Then he withdrew. Just a little, about a foot away, and as Alejandro sat up, Faraday took a deep breath and pushed up his chin and…changed. Looked at Alejandro again, his head moving like a man and not like a wolf, and then he changed back.

“Better,” Alejandro said after a moment, when Faraday didn’t seem inclined to.

Faraday shrugged, but he was already smelling less angry. Alejandro sniffed, watched the man part his lips and not say anything, and then leaned over.

When he kissed Faraday, a hand came up to his face, but to curve against it, not push at it. He grinned and Faraday made an annoyed sound into his mouth, just before teasing his tongue along the backs of Alejandro’s teeth. And then, just as Alejandro was registering the way that started up an _ache_ in him, Faraday did push him back.

“Wash your mouth,” he said. Then raised his brows when Alejandro just stared at him. “I _know_ where it’s been, _muchacho_ , and I have this better sense of taste and smell now, and well, I always had standards, even in the direst—”

Alejandro kissed him again, harder, and clamped his hands on Faraday’s hips when the other man smacked a hand into his shoulder. Faraday went still, then suddenly climbed onto _him_ , dragging his fingers through Alejandro’s hair and down across the back of Alejandro’s neck. Something about that, the press across his nape, made Alejandro shiver, and when Faraday realized, he made a gleeful noise, smelling so strongly of happiness that Alejandro’s head swam.

When it cleared up a little, Alejandro rolled them into the creek.

* * *

“Because I’m not a goddamn dog, and they have enough linen to wipe down with so I’m going to use it,” Josh, as he’d snapped back to a stray _guero_ , said, opening and shutting the chest at the foot of Alejandro’s bed. 

He straightened up, a blanket under one arm, and then proceeded to mop at himself. He did his legs and then sat on the bed, damp spreading out around him as he moved onto his arms and head. It was a big enough bed, and now the morning light was coming strong through the window, which had real glass panes in it. So instead of pushing the other man off, Alejandro dusted his hands off against the outside of the sill and then shut the window.

“You look the most like one,” Alejandro said. Then pointed at Josh’s hair when the other man just stared at him. “You’re red, even as a wolf. I think we could say to people, this is a dog, just with wolf-blood in him. Like what the Indians keep.”

“Are you going to stand there and keep making personal comments about me, or are you going to sit down and actually help?” Josh said, and followed it up with a petty flick of the blanket at Alejandro as he crossed the room. “It’s all well and good, being a werewolf, but we can still die and maybe that’s part of your whole idea about not letting this bother you, but I don’t—”

Alejandro retrieved his clothes, which had been waiting for him on the chest but which Josh had unceremoniously knocked off. He used the trousers to dry himself off, then tossed them over the chest to dry and pulled the shirt over his head. It still stuck some to him, especially at the back, but not bad. “He bothers me,” he said, rolling onto the other end of the bed.

Josh stopped, blinking.

“Not this—” Alejandro gestured at his head “—or if he wants to die, not that. He knows what he wants, and I like him, but if he wants to die, then…I did not want to die on that porch, and he made it so I did not. So who am I to tell him do not do that? But—”

“But you don’t think that’s what he’s after,” Josh said.

“I don’t think if he dies, we all die,” Alejandro said after a moment. He hadn’t asked as many questions as Josh, but he had listened and watched, and done some thinking. When he’d first come out of Mexico into a town that was _Texas_ instead, it had looked the same but hadn’t sounded the same—he’d had a headache, walking around and hearing everything he couldn’t understand. But he’d learned English, and that had gone away, and he was starting to think the supernatural was the same. “But I agree with Argent. If he _doesn’t_ die, and this one who is after him, he takes him, _then_ we probably die.”

Josh snorted. Pulled the blanket off his shoulders and let it puddle in his lap as he pushed himself further onto the bed. “You don’t think you could stand up to him, big Mexican fellow like yourself?”

“We can’t,” Alejandro said. He pulled one knee up. “He tells you to stop, you stop. You’ve—we’ve all seen that. Felt that.”

“Yeah, that,” Josh said after a long pause. He was less bitter about it than Alejandro would have expected, with his pride, but the rueful smile he gave Alejandro was still twisted on one side. “About that. So we know when he’s mad, and when he tells us to heel, we heel. Even though we aren’t dogs. I know you like him, but—”

“You don’t like him?” Alejandro asked.

Josh stuttered for a second, then stopped. He looked more annoyed at that than at admitting he couldn’t cross Sam Chisolm. Then he sighed and shrugged, and slouched backward till he could prop his head against the footboard and stare at the ceiling.

“I kind of do, actually. Well, before all of this—he had a sense of humor about threatening you,” Josh said, folding his hands across his chest. “Rare thing, that. But he’s not really telling jokes now, not with Goodnight and Red Harvest taking turns at him.”

“Goodnight’s his friend,” Alejandro said.

“All right, you were smelling me, you can’t have missed that. Or Billy,” Josh said, turning his head towards Alejandro. When Alejandro shrugged, Josh raised his brows, then went back to staring at the ceiling. “You’re a remarkably tolerant soul for a Mexican shootist, Alehand—Alejohn—goddamn it.”

Alejandro snickered. “This is not that hard a language, _guero_. But you can call me Ale, if it is easier.”

“You could stop calling _me_ that,” Josh said, irritated again. “I told you, I know what it means.”

“Did they tell you?” Alejandro said, with genuine curiosity. He hadn’t gotten around to asking Erica before they’d left, and this Joshua Faraday, sprawling across his bed, still prickly about his pride but smelling like river-water and a little sweat and _Alejandro_ , that was him mixing in…he found it less of a joke than before. Much less. “Josh.”

Instead of answering, Josh pushed himself up on his elbows. He tugged the blanket, which had slid nearly off him, over his legs and sat up against the footboard. “You say that a little funny,” he grunted as he moved around. Then he looked up. “Look, Ale…Ale. I think I can live with having Sam Chisolm getting mad in the back of my head, but I don’t really want to live with him trying to run out of it all the time and then shoving back in. So here’s what I think, I think whatever deal he thought he made back then, he didn’t actually make it. Assuming these people all actually know what they’re talking about, and as hellish as they’ve been, they seem to, they can’t seem to figure out whether it’s this or that or the other.”

“They’ve been very nice, you know. No killing, plenty of food, never complaining about how many shirts we tear,” Alejandro couldn’t help saying. When he smelled Josh’s temper rising, he put his hand down and moved it in a patting, soothing motion. “All right, I am listening. But I think we already knew this.”

“Well, but here’s what else—these things who all keep coming after us, they’re all dead things that didn’t stay dead when they should have,” Josh said, after just a second’s worth of glaring at Alejandro. He was well into his idea now, animated in a way Alejandro had last seen when they’d started cracking open the boxes of dynamite. “Which is _not_ what we are. We’re…we’re _living_ things that didn’t stay dead. We did it properly. Or Chisolm did, even if he didn’t know what he was doing.”

“So they’re…jealous?” Alejandro said.

He’d been joking, mostly, but the way Josh suddenly stopped and stared at him, mouth a little open, made him push up against the headboard. “Kind of. Maybe,” Josh said. “I’m still trying to work through it, but…Chisolm thinks he made a deal to come back from the dead. But it’s not like he made a deal to bring us back. So…I started thinking, what if he _didn’t_ make a deal?”

“But they said what he did, with the claws, they have heard of that before,” Alejandro pointed out.

“Yeah, they said it’s a werewolf trick. _But he’s not a werewolf_ ,” Josh said. He paused, the way you would before laying your hand down. “I’m not sure they know what he is. You saw the way this Stiles acted around him, didn’t you? It was just like—oh, you weren’t awake for that. When we got to Reyes’ ranch, she came up to meet us, and she was eyeing him the same way, like…like…”

“I can hear you,” said somebody outside the door. Derek.

And now that Alejandro was thinking about it, he could hear Derek’s heartbeat. He’d been so busy listening to Josh that he hadn’t been thinking—the man had been up for a while, he hadn’t just woken. He and Josh stared at each other, and then Josh looked at the gunbelt he’d left in the corner.

“I can hear you,” Derek said again, with a gusty sigh. “I don’t really want to. When you were out by the creek, that was far enough to ignore—also, that’s my actual _bed_ in there, so if you could keep on keeping it outside, I’d appreciate it. But if you’re going to talk about what your alpha is…if you’re thinking about taking me, you can’t. Also I just put down new floorboards, so you get blood on them and I’m going to make you stay with Laura.”

Josh snorted, then flopped back against the footboard. “He did take back all the bullets,” he muttered.

“Argent?” Alejandro muttered back. “All of them? You didn’t keep any—”

“He’s good,” Josh said, grimacing, and then he twisted around. “Well, did you want an invitation? It’s your house, isn’t it?”

The door creaked open. Its hinges could use some oil, Alejandro thought as it ground to a halt, and then Derek knocked it the rest of the way and stepped into the room. He wasn’t moving because he was cautious so much as that he was, it seemed, trying not to breathe.

Alejandro thought about it and then got up and opened half the window. Derek’s nostrils flared with a relieved sigh. “You should ask Laura for some pomanders. They’d help,” he said, still talking a little through his nose.

“You seem pretty relaxed about directing men to your sister,” Josh said, twisting around to face Derek. “You always recommend her house to strangers?”

Derek was unimpressed with the comments. “She’d kill you if you tried anything, and anyway, neither of you are going to.”

“You’re sure of that?” Josh said, before Alejandro could kick him. His scent was all over the place, seesawing between nervous and angry, even though he was grinning at Derek.

“I’m sure you aren’t interested in her, either of you,” Derek said flatly. He looked at Josh for a few seconds, then sighed again. “Look, we’re werewolves, we’re going to know, and nobody here cares because we’re _werewolves_.”

“That doesn’t mean you don’t care,” Alejandro said. “At least, we don’t know that.”

“It means I know what you’ve been doing, and since I’m always going to know, either I can not care or I can spend a lot of time getting involved in things that don’t really matter to me,” Derek said, starting to sound annoyed. “Anyway, we already went through people who wanted to burn us alive for just cursing them, so—”

“What?” Alejandro and Josh both said.

Derek waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “Witchcraft, but we’re werewolves now. And they’re all dead and not coming back. We know where their bodies are,” he said. “So if you want to keep talking about it, I’m going to leave.”

Josh opened his mouth, closed it, glanced at Alejandro who shrugged helplessly. Then he turned back to Derek. “Well, I have to point out that you’re the one who spoke up. But—” he raised his hand, just as Derek was beginning to scowl “—but you did mention something about an alpha.”

“Yeah,” Derek said, looking as if he wished he had just left. “ _Your_ alpha.”

“You mean Chisolm,” Alejandro said. When Derek nodded, he leaned back. “Your alpha, he thinks Chisolm is _our_ alpha.”

Derek’s brows knit together. He hadn’t spoken much, to anyone, and when he had spoken it’d mostly been to his family or to his…other pack members, Stiles and Argent and his wife. Alejandro had gotten the impression the man just wanted to be clear on what was going to happen and then be allowed to go off and do his part, but he was clearly looking at them with more than just that on his mind.

“He didn’t bite us,” Alejandro added, though Josh gave him a wary look for it. They—Goodnight and Chisolm—hadn’t mentioned it yet, but Argent knew and Alejandro assumed anything Argent knew, they’d all know. “The alpha bites the rest.”

“Most of the time,” Derek finally said. He started to show a little restlessness, drawing one foot against the other. “You see werewolves who they didn’t bite joining up. We’ve got a few like that, and Erica, you met her. Half her pack, she didn’t bite them.”

“Because she killed her alpha, and took over,” Alejandro said.

Josh made a thoughtful noise. “Is that why your alpha’s pussyfooting around Sam?” he asked. “Because he’s wondering if maybe Sam took out an alpha, somewhere down the line?”

“Stiles wouldn’t worry about that, he’s killed three himself,” Derek snorted. “What he’s wondering is why your alpha isn’t a werewolf.”

“Well, I was asking myself that, as a matter of fact,” Josh said.

Too quick to jump on it. Alejandro shook his head and it caught Josh’s eye; he looked over, then back at Derek, who was grinning like he’d just caught them out. “He was going to talk about it after you rested up,” Derek said. “But since you’re awake, I’ll go let him know you want to get started.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Nemeton in TW is very poorly defined, but was an attempt to reference the druidic practice of centralizing worship in oak groves. TW never totally made it clear whether the Nemeton was its own entity, or was just a sort of storage container for some really dangerous/dark magic, or was a thing people could create with the magic of a blood sacrifice. My take in my previous story is that it's a distinct, non-human entity who can make connections with humans, but who you handle very carefully (as you would any weapon). Stiles has an understanding with it, but it's certainly not his pet.
> 
> I have a headcanon that werewolves run hotter than regular people, because you need a lot of energy to power all that mass-shifting.


	13. Rocks

Laura Hale was probably the one Billy liked the most right now. She showed him and Red Harvest to the cots they’d set up in her cabin, pointed out where everything was, and then she told them she’d wake up if they used anything but the door because that meant they’d be going through her garden and she would murder them for crushing her herbs. Then she left him alone.

So when Billy twisted over, not really having slept, and heard Faraday and Vasquez nagging at each other down by the creek, he decided his chances of falling back asleep were slim and went out the front door.

Red Harvest hadn’t used the cot next to him, as far as Billy could tell, but the man had stayed close for once: he was in the garden with Laura, both of them crouched over a patch of violet flowers. Laura had a bandana wrapped around her nose and mouth and gloves on her hands; Billy slowed enough for the breeze to catch up and then realized what the flowers were.

“Not poisoning you,” Laura said as she carefully moved in the wolfsbane. “Are you looking for breakfast?”

“Yes,” Billy said after a moment.

Red Harvest looked at him, but it wasn’t Chisolm Billy was going to find so they didn’t have anything to say to each other, so far as Billy knew. Laura also looked at him, and Billy had the sense that she knew he hadn’t any idea up till she’d asked.

But she also didn’t say anything, and so Billy headed over to the main cabin, where Goodnight and Sam had bunked down. It wasn’t as big as Erica’s ranch-house, but it had the same quality where Billy could see more rooms than he could hear. He listened as one beam, which by general location should have run to the end of the house, finished its groaning about three-quarters of the way.

The next closest cabin belonged to Argent and his wife. It also had the lone, small stable, since apparently only they really used horses, and they spent half their time in the town that everyone kept claiming was around here. Billy swung by, confirmed that Chisolm’s horse was still around, and then was heading for the kitchen—he got hungrier sooner these days, and had a harder time ignoring it—when he heard someone coming out of the front of the house.

Instead of facing the creek or the path in and out of the clearing, the house faced the giant oak tree they called a Nemeton. Wasn’t the view Billy would have chosen for pleasure, especially after he’d had to touch the thing, but if it was to keep an eye on it, maybe it made sense.

The thing was, he thought as he went around the side of the house, that tree made him feel as if it was keeping an eye on _him_. And it wasn’t the same as the crawling feeling he’d gotten back in the omega territory; it’d been disturbing that he couldn’t pin down the source till they’d been attacked, but that kind of hostile, aggressive stare, he’d come across that before. The tree, on the other hand, felt like…well, he didn’t know how a goddamn tree felt. More like how he felt, like one of those crabs waiting in pots of water and watching its companions get forked up one by one. He didn’t usually look at things as how he felt, and he didn’t care for it.

“Goodnight’s inside,” Chisolm said, without turning around, without Billy having gotten within twenty feet of him. “Think he got tired of making sure I wasn’t going to walk off.”

“He’s going to wake up and run out if you’re not there,” Billy said, crossing the rest of the way.

That earned him a look over. Chisolm had shaved, a little unevenly, and he was missing his usual vest. Up close his complexion didn’t hide the puffed circles under his eyes. “I am here,” he said calmly. “Why aren’t you two watching for each other now?”

Billy stared at him, then let out a curt laugh. “Why would you ask that?”

“Well, because Goodnight’s a good man, under all that guilt, and I wish he’d keep on going, and for a while there, I thought you were helping,” Chisolm said. He went back to looking at the tree, not as if he liked it better than Billy did but as if he was trying to pick something out from its leaves or bark. “Thought you wanted to help.”

“We had a partnership,” Billy said.

His stomach kneaded at him. Stupid little selfish thing, he’d think any other time, but right now he was glad for the excuse to turn away. 

“He told me once that he made you a deal,” Chisolm suddenly said, stopping Billy. “Said if you died first, he’d send anything left in your share to your family in Korea, and if he died first, you’d get whatever you could find on him.”

Billy laughed again before he could help it, a real laugh. If he had been able to help it, he would have thinned the emotion out of it. “He was drunk when he said that. I didn’t actually agree, he was just talking. I don’t have any family.”

Chisolm nodded, unsurprised. He kept rubbing the back of his hand against his leg, and then he started picking at his skin, as if he’d gotten sunburned. “He also told me he hired you to just make sure somebody was around to pick him up and put him in a real grave, since silly as it was, he just couldn’t bring himself to think about not having one.”

“He did say that too,” Billy said after a long silence. He glanced over his shoulder, at the suspiciously quiet house. “You pulled him out of those Union soldiers because you felt sorry for him, is that right? Because he was some white man, some Rebel with the way he talks, and you’d heard that before the War, and you felt _sorry_? Looking at him—getting to look at him?”

“You know, the way you ask that, I almost want to ask if you were below the Mason-Dixon line before the War,” Chisolm said, half-turning. He was showing his teeth, not in a smile, and in the grey dawn light they glimmered a little like a knife blade. He and Billy sized each other up before something else struck Chisolm and he grimaced, turned away. It wasn’t about Billy intimidating him, that was clear. “He wasn’t real pretty right then. Actually, I didn’t have any idea what he looked like for a couple days, they’d bruised his face up so much. If that was what you were after.”

Billy opened his mouth, then shut it. He rarely talked to people except Goodnight for a reason; he had his knives for a reason. He knew both reasons, and knew he should walk, but…he looked at his hands. He wasn’t that surprised when they were hairier than they should have been.

“I don’t look,” Chisolm said, spacing out the words with care. When Billy looked up, Chisolm’s steady gaze pinned him like two of his daggers. “I don’t. Never have, really. I fuck—you have to—you end up in places sometimes where it makes more sense than not doing it, but it never was something I looked for. I don’t know why—I know people usually do. I can see that. I’ve seen Goodnight looking and he can’t help himself and you know, if he wasn’t such a good shot I wonder how he would’ve even…and I told him so, years ago.”

Billy twitched and felt his claws come out. It didn’t hurt when they did, but he could feel the flesh at his fingertips stretch out, then back from the claws because they sank in deeper than his nails. He still wasn’t used to it.

“He wasn’t fighting back, when they were beating him,” Chisolm added after a moment. He looked down at the ground. “There were plenty like that near the end, just lying there till you shoved a bayonet in their throat. I got tired of it, and then the War did end, and I was on my way to track down my family and…I don’t know, I just didn’t want to see it. So I pulled him out and he didn’t die on me, and after that he came along when I was getting my mother and sisters, because they were still down in Arkansas. Kind of charmed his way into it.”

“He’s good at that,” Billy said, and then swallowed, not liking the way he sounded.

“My mother, and Sally, my middle sister, they just _ate_ that up,” Chisolm said. He paused, still looking down, corners of his mouth curling. When he looked up, the smile was gone. “He knows better than to count on me. He saw me, right after the farm burned and they were all dead—he knows better.”

“If you’re expecting that to matter, you don’t really know him,” Billy snorted. 

“Well, then why aren’t you talking him out of it?” Chisolm asked.

Billy wanted to charge the man. It was a sudden, wild urge, something he didn’t usually worry about, and as quick as it came up Chisolm looked over and he was older and wasn’t a werewolf and still his gaze cut right through Billy. The goddamn werewolf, seeing something in it that Billy didn’t, and it just wanted to back right down.

“That wasn’t the deal,” Billy said, before he turned on his heel and walked to the kitchen.

Someone had a fire going in it, and was moving around—then something else caught Billy’s attention and he looked across the clearing to spot Faraday and Vasquez hopping back into Vasquez’s cabin through the window. Vasquez was a wolf, but changed into a human while he was perched on the window-sill; Faraday was human, and naked with his clothes wadded up in his hand but trickling out as he took a good look at Vasquez’s backside.

Billy snorted and went inside to find not Goodnight, or even Peter Hale, but the local alpha with a half-eaten pan of cornbread and a pot of coffee in front of him. Stiles looked up, motioned for Billy to help himself, and then went back to squinting at an old, thick book with a faint animal smell coming off it. Coming off the pages. It was that old.

It was big enough and Stiles was skinny enough that he should have been working to hold the book off his lap the way he was, without even the table bracing it, but Stiles had stopped pretending to be what he looked around the time he’d introduced them all to his pet tree.

“There’s butter on the shelf,” Stiles said, turning a page. “Or honey and jam, other side, if that’s what you like.”

The cornbread smelled fine as it was and Billy was hungry, but he wasn’t Vasquez. He did get himself his own dish, and used a spoon to cut out a helping. “What are you doing with Chisolm?”

Stiles looked over, then tilted the book out of his way. He kept his legs propped up on the chair across from him. “I’m not. I told him if the tree was keeping him up, the best thing to do was to tell it that himself. It respects you more that way.”

“He’s got other things to keep him up,” Billy said after a moment. He tore off some bread with his teeth, chewed and swallowed it. “Can the tree talk to those?”

“It could, but I don’t know if you want it talking to them,” Stiles said slowly. “The tree is…not human. It doesn’t have any human to even remember, it never was human. So it doesn’t feel about things the way we do.”

The last thing Billy wanted to care about was what a tree felt. He bit off another piece of cornbread, then nearly choked himself as a snort came out of nowhere. It wasn’t really that funny, he thought, swallowing down the laugh. 

Stiles was eyeing him. Then, smooth and slow, the other man pushed the coffeepot towards Billy.

“Is the idea to kill us with the tree if we can’t get this under control?” Billy asked.

“I don’t like having the tree kill people,” Stiles said, frowning. He closed the book completely, leaning back in his chair. “I owe it when that happens, and…it’d take a while to explain, but you don’t want to owe something like a Nemeton, not for very long.”

“So right now, when you don’t owe it, you’re…friends?” Billy said. “Or something else.”

“Friends isn’t what I’d call it. It’s…it lives here, and so do we, and we get along, mostly,” Stiles said. His head tilted slightly, as if he was listening to something, though Billy couldn’t hear anything else except Chisolm muttering to himself outside. “It does pay attention to what happens around it, and it likes and doesn’t like things. I guess you could say it likes me, but it’s a tree and that doesn’t mean the same thing to it. But if you’re wondering—if I ask it to look after something or someone, it generally will.”

“But you’ll owe it,” Billy said.

Stiles lifted and dropped a shoulder. “Not as much, and I don’t mind paying it back for that.”

“So we’re going to owe you,” Billy said.

“Your alpha is going to owe me, that’s how we work,” Stiles said. Watching for something, his eyes narrowing a little. He caught you off-guard mostly because you weren’t looking for those kinds of habits in a lanky, baby-faced type, but once you put that aside, his tells were common enough. “Yeah, I know—any other werewolf looking at you all can tell, this isn’t a very old pack. You could try letting that show less. Most of us take that as weakness.”

Billy took some of the coffee. It was better than the coffee Reyes had served up, for all that she had the fancy silverware. “That only works if we all agree we’re going to act that way. If—”

“You don’t think you’re in a pack, or that you have an alpha?” Stiles interjected. He wasn’t making it a tease like Reyes would have, or showing his discomfort with it like Argent usually did. He was observing it like you’d observe a passing herd of wildlife when you weren’t in the mood for shooting. “You can think that, but it doesn’t look like you’ve broken off yet, so nobody’s going to act like you have.”

It was on the tip of Billy’s tongue to snap that he didn’t know half of what Stiles was saying, and if he didn’t know it, he couldn’t be bound by it. Except…he’d known better, even before coming back as a werewolf. And his damn hands were hairy again.

“You and Reyes,” he said, trying to divert his attention. “That why neither of you seem that scared about having us around?”

Something moved at the other end of the house. Billy heard it and then he didn’t hear it, and instead what he picked up was Chisolm walking towards the kitchen. He turned around anyway, towards the first sound. Then turned back as a chair scraped the floor, catching Stiles halfway to his feet.

“I don’t know about Erica, I wasn’t there,” Stiles said, tucking the book under his arm. “But you’re not looking for _another_ pack, or another alpha. I can tell that. If you were, then I’d want to kill you.”

“So what do you want with us right now?” Billy asked.

Instead of answering, Stiles looked at the door. Chisolm was almost there and if for werewolves, the alpha had to answer for everyone—that hadn’t been the deal either. And he didn’t give a damn, Billy thought. He’d answered for himself long before all of this.

“Packs fall apart all the time,” Stiles said, just as Billy pushed his chair back from the table. He was still looking at the door. “It’s ugly, and usually at least some of them kill each other, and I probably shouldn’t have you around if that happens. It’s none of my business, and I’m supposed to keep my own pack safe, not worry about others. But…I think it’s still early. And Chisolm helped hunt down some men that killed most of Peter’s family. So I owe him a little time, I guess.”

Chisolm had come in during that and caught the last part. He looked wary. “You mean Chris’ father’s men, I didn’t even know you were involved in that. You or Peter.”

“Yeah, Chris said,” Stiles agreed. He glanced between Chisolm and Billy, then turned around. “I’m done eating, going to see if Peter’s up yet. Help yourself.”

He walked out the other door, leaving Chisolm to stand on the threshold and eye Billy. When Billy finally just pushed the cornbread tray over, Chisolm grimaced and turned away. But he shut the door, and then stepped the rest of the way into the room.

“Didn’t come to eat,” he said as he took a seat across from Billy.

“If you’re going to starve yourself, you should probably ask them what that does to you,” Billy said. “I start listening for birds these days. And I think Vasquez had himself a jackrabbit on the way here.”

Chisolm shot Billy a half-skeptical look. Billy shrugged and watched him, and after a moment, Chisolm reached over and took the pan by the corner. He pulled it over to him and put his fingers on top of the spoon Billy had left in it.

“This isn’t about Goody,” Billy said, before he could think much about it.

“No?” Chisolm said. He tapped one finger against the cornbread, then sat back.

Billy pressed his lips together. He _didn’t_ want to think about it, in the sense that it was already thought through so he didn’t want to get caught up dwelling on how it was. He was not that kind of person, and him being a goddamned werewolf—wasn’t running after things to kill more interesting? “He told me a whole book about you before I even met you,” he said, and found himself grinning, not without real humor. “That part, that was set before we even died. That’s just _him_ , and I’m not looking to get rid of him.”

Chisolm drew a breath like he was going to say something. He did look a little clearer than he had been—more tired, but sharper, not like his mind was constantly somewhere else. He was looking _at_ Billy instead through him.

Not what Billy would’ve wanted right now. “It’s about you. This was about you from the beginning—it wasn’t about Cullen or the others. They just got lucky that the one beating up on them was Bogue, and your hate for him’s the reason you went around—” Billy traced a circle in the air with his index finger “—and got a bunch of us together, and finally called up Goody again, and then when some of us died, you thought that was wrong because it should’ve been you instead so you tried to end this deal you made, in case that was what’d been stopping you—”

The wave of anger that went through Billy tasted like fresh ashes, still carrying heat from the fire. It came just a second before the words out of Chisolm’s mouth. “It _was_ me. It is me,” Chisolm said, low and forceful. “I’ve been saying that all along. That’s why I tried to leave, because I can—I started to see, now that Bogue’s gone, I don’t have any reason to drag other people—”

“But you’re still not facing up to it,” Billy snapped. “You’re thinking you can walk and it’ll end—well, it’s too late for that. We _already_ followed you. We are _still_ following you, and—”

“I didn’t ask for that,” Chisolm snapped back.

“You didn’t have to. We’re doing it.” Billy heard his voice drop lower than it should and looked at his hands. Claws, of course. “And the thing is you’re so busy watching us and thinking about how to get rid of us that you’re not looking at yourself, as if you’re going to bring people back from the dead and the only ones who would’ve changed are us—”

Something made him go very still. His claws stabbed down into the table, then abruptly retracted and smoothed to nails. He stared at his flat, splayed hands for another moment, then worked up the breath to look up.

Chisolm looked exactly the same. Angry, his eyes fit to burn through Billy, but everything else was the same. Still, every part of Billy wanted to back up against the wall and then crouch low to the ground, make himself unseen. 

That _wasn’t_ him. He pushed back against it, even as his own body tried to contort him out of itself, and—it _hurt_ , fighting his own bones. It hurt, he thought, and suddenly that feeling went away and he looked up and Chisolm was just studying him. No anger, but…interest.

“You don’t like the idea that I can tell you,” Chisolm suddenly said. “I’m not trying to.”

“Right now,” Billy said, careful, still feeling his jawbone settle. He took a breath. “I can tell you’re not trying. You don’t want to know what you’re doing, but you’re doing it—back there at the rock, when I had you, you—”

His jaw twisted. He stopped and took a deeper, longer breath. Chisolm seemed to understand the problem and waited with him, but as time stretched on and he didn’t pick up the conversation again, the other man started to get impatient. Finally he cleared his throat.

“You didn’t feel…human,” Billy said before he could speak. “Just for a—but I had you, and I could feel it when you broke my hold. You—you _broke_ my hold. I’m a werewolf now. You shouldn’t be able to do that.”

It came out thin, like a complaining child. Billy grimaced at himself and slouched back, then shrugged. He just couldn’t help anything these days, it seemed.

“You don’t seem to want this,” Chisolm said. Which wasn’t where they’d been done, he acknowledged with a nod, but the set of his shoulders said he wanted to see this through first. “I didn’t know what I was doing, but I did it, I’ll take responsibility. I’m sorry. If you want to leave—”

Billy pushed himself up.

“Goodnight’s not going anywhere, I’ll see to that, whatever happens.” Chisolm paused, then went on a little more quietly. “I did that too.”

“He’s a grown man, if he wants to ride into some stupid fight because he thinks it’ll make him feel better about the War, he can,” Billy said, irritated. He looked at the doorway into the house, then back at Chisolm. “I’m not leaving. I didn’t leave when he did, did I? Not everything I do’s because of him.”

Chisolm didn’t quite follow, but Billy would give him this, he wore that better than most. “Then I think you’ll have to get used to this,” he said. He gestured with two fingers. “What you are. Why…why don’t you like it?”

“You think I liked being dead?” Billy said. “It’s not about wanting it, it’s just what is, and I—” his hands had changed again and he snarled before he could stop himself, then pulled back in his chair “—it’s more of a goddamn nuisance than you’d think, hearing about it. Thinking this is being a wolf, this isn’t, twice as many things to think about.”

“And you don’t like thinking,” Chisolm said.

Billy shrugged. “Leads to trouble, and I usually have enough of that. I…I think, when I’m a wolf, that this might be easier. But I know that that is a lie. When you let yourself believe that things are easy, then you end up in trouble.”

Chisolm nodded. He didn’t seem inclined to add any commentary, and after a few more seconds had passed, he sighed and carved himself up a few fingerfuls of cornbread. He needed to eat it, Billy could smell that on him, but he didn’t seem to be enjoying it.

“How wasn’t I human?” he asked, right after swallowing. Then he knocked his hand against the spoon so it rang against the pan. It was on purpose, stopping Billy from answering. “I don’t think you’re not—not human, when you all turn into wolves. You can still see _you_ in there. I wasn’t—I was ignoring it, at the start, but hell, even Vasquez saw that, and it wasn’t like he knew any of you before. He was talking to the three of you and…I was hearing things I didn’t need to hear. Things that didn’t need my attention.”

“Your family?” Billy said.

“No…not them.” For a long second Chisolm stared at the wall past Billy’s head, chewing on whatever he was remembering. “I thought it was them, at the start. But it’s not. They’re all talking about what I owe, what I’ve got to do for them…but that’s bullshit. That’s _my_ bullshit, talking to me. It took me a while to realize…I think I was tired. And you’re right. It’s easier to not think.”

“You aren’t supposed to be just human,” Billy said after a long second. “Because it felt right, finally, when I had hold of you, but then—you weren’t the right way and I just knew that. I’m not sure…but this isn’t how it should be. You’re supposed to be something else.”

Chisolm took that in. Then he considered the cornbread. He sighed and pushed back from the table, and took the tray over to a hutch in the corner to store it. Then he turned around.

“Goody was going to come back, and if he was, he’d want to come back to you. He wouldn’t have wanted me to get him on the way and stop him, or anything like that,” Billy said, getting up too.

“I thought you said it wasn’t about him,” Chisolm said.

“It’s not. I don’t just do what he wants,” Billy said. “I watched you set it up and I figured I needed something to watch while I was waiting on him. You set it up well. I like that. I just don’t like what you’ve been doing since. You’re not even _trying_ to set it up, you’re just trying to run.”

Chisolm kept his mouth open like he was going to say something, but didn’t. He watched Billy clean off his plate and set it on a rack to dry, and then head for the outside door, and didn’t say a word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have to say, Denzel's inherent sex-bomb-ness was a lot more muted than usual in _Magnificent Seven_. He definitely had chemistry with the other actors, but not that kind of chemistry, and he and Ethan Hawke had all kinds of Foe Yay/hate-sex vibes happening in _Training Day_. This is my take on that.
> 
> Sam's supposed to be a take on [Bass Reeves](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bass_Reeves) so I've pulled bits from Reeves' bio whenever possible.
> 
> Stiles keeps around books old enough to use vellum for pages, and vellum, of course, is really a very thin kind of leather.


	14. Robicheaux

Coming off the first real night’s sleep Goodnight had had since…resurrecting, to be honest…it was more than a little embarrassing for Goodnight to find he was the last one to the breakfast table. He generally was an early riser, and given the circumstances, he had more motivation than usual to not miss anything.

“You didn’t miss anything,” Sam said as Goodnight seated himself at the kitchen table. “I’ve been here the whole time.”

“Well, yes, now that I _see_ you, I realize that,” Goodnight pointed out. 

Sam frowned. “I left my guns in there.”

“These days that only raises more questions than it answers,” Goodnight muttered as he addressed himself to his plate.

The food was excellent, if all cold: smoked venison and jellied fruit and beans. There’d also been a pan of what smelled as if it’d once been a delicious cornbread, but the pan had also smelled like just about everyone in the immediate area had touched it, including Sam, and that didn’t much stir Goodnight’s appetite. 

“Did you think somebody had drugged me again?” Sam asked, and then had the temerity to look startled when Goodnight jerked his head up. “Not looking to kill anybody over that, you kn—”

“Why aren’t you?” Goodnight asked. He watched the other man mull over that, and it was clear Sam was still confused over the question, not the situation. “Sam, I know you—at least, I thought I did. And what you _don’t_ do is, you don’t let anyone else ever take the situation from you. Ever. And what we did—”

“I know what you did,” Sam said sharply. He leaned forward only a little, but somehow it felt as if he’d reached over and clamped his hand down on Goodnight’s shoulder. He held the look, then settled back, and the hold on Goodnight didn’t lift. “I know what you did. And I have thought about it, Goodnight, and…”

“Don’t tell me you’ve gone soft, seeing us all die on you,” Goodnight said.

It wasn’t his best attempt at humor, and it wasn’t intended to be. He didn’t like that tight, tense feeling in his shoulders and he wanted it off, and he knew Sam well enough to know what’d throw the man. He thought he knew.

He did know enough for Sam to break the stare, sucking his breath and glancing away. Then back at Goodnight, still shocked enough to wear it on his face. “You really think I’m that coldblooded?” he asked.

Goodnight grimaced. Then hissed, startling, as his knife slipped out of his limp hand. He knocked it back onto his plate before it could fall to the floor, then pressed the heel of his hand against his eye. “No, I didn’t mean…ah, hell, Sam, I just…why aren’t you mad? Honestly?”

“Oh, I am. I’m mad I didn’t think to guess twice when Reyes walked in with Billy,” Sam said after a moment. He absently tapped his fingers against the table. “Now, if Billy had come in on his own, I might’ve thought you’d buttered him up to it but I wouldn’t have thought drugs—”

“Sam,” Goodnight said, a little exasperated, a little disbelieving.

“I’m not sure,” Sam said. Then his brow creased. He shook his head, slowly but firmly. “No, I…you know, I thought about it, and I guess I can understand wanting to do whatever you have to, to make sure someone doesn’t get hurt. I couldn’t rightly understand why _I’d_ be that person for someone like Billy, but we talked earlier, and I think I see now.”

They’d talked. For a second Goodnight couldn’t even imagine what that meant, and then he could imagine so many possible conversations—he rubbed his hand over his face again, almost wanting to laugh into it. Because when you felt as twisted-up as he did right now, well, all you could do was laugh.

“I did feel—when the bullets stopped flying around, and I finally got my head up, and saw that only me and Vasquez and Red Harvest were left,” Sam went on, his tone growing quieter, lighter in a way. “Bogue was dead and so were you, and the others, and more than that and…it didn’t feel like I’d settled that much, you know. It just felt…like so much dirt, just piling up. And I think when I went back, it was—it was for that too. I wanted to close up the last piece of outstanding business I had because I didn’t think I had anything left. Could have anything left.”

“That’s more than you said when you buried your mother and sisters,” Goodnight finally said.

Sam sighed. “Yeah. Well, you know…I need to take my time on some things. When you all came back, for example. Maybe this doesn’t make any sense but—I was expecting one thing, got another, and I just was—mad about it, even if before that, I would’ve…anyway. You drugged me, but I understand it. I’m not going to _forget_ , but I understand.”

And more than that, if Goodnight was hearing the man right, but he didn’t want to say it. The soft, careful way Sam was pushing out each word, as if waiting to see if it’d keep together or fall apart…if they did, Goodnight didn’t want that laid at his door. He’d wrecked enough things in his life with a misplaced word or act; sometimes he thought his gift with a rifle was the only time he could be sure of putting something where he wanted it.

“I give a damn if you die,” Sam said, and then he and Goodnight sat there with that. “Hell. I think I give a damn if _Faraday_ dies.”

“I suspect that is going to inflate the man’s ego to no end,” Goodnight said, risking a smile.

Sam shrugged. “Well, maybe, if Vasquez isn’t doing that now.”

“Oh, I think it’ll be a while before it’s resolved in that direction,” Goodnight muttered, turning back to his plate. Then he frowned. “Sam?”

“Earlier,” Sam said, after he’d gotten over his twitch. He coughed, then looked sheepish. “I did take a walk—didn’t sleep well. They were down by the creek—I guess that sharp hearing of yours doesn’t matter if you’re distracted.”

Goodnight stared. Then, gingerly, put his knife back down. “Sam, you said _I didn’t miss anything_.”

“Well, nothing that was going to leave a permanent mark,” Sam said, with absolutely no heart in it. “You all heal now.”

Goodnight opened his mouth and raised his hand. Then shut the mouth, lowered the hand. Considered his food, then took his knife and fork up and cut and ate several pieces of venison while Sam looked on, smelling deeply amused.

“All right,” Goodnight said once he’d properly fortified himself. He wiped his mouth with the side of his hand, then tried to push past the petty irritation. “All right, well, at least they’re taking advantage of this new life.”

“You ever tell Billy that you and I…” Sam started, and then he glanced down, smelling regretful all of a sudden. Which wasn’t for a second because he’d changed, Goodnight didn’t think that. “I do give a damn, Goodnight, but you know I just…I don’t…”

“Sam, the righteous man has enough trouble making his way through this world, I don’t think he needs to apologize for the selfishness of others,” Goodnight said. “It’s enough that you’re not running off to fight the Devil on your own, that’s all I ask.”

Of course, Sam being Sam, he couldn’t just let that go. He and Goodnight had had this out before and he wasn’t going to go over the whole argument again, but he could sit there and look at Goodnight, to the point that Goodnight felt he should be the one shying away.

“Besides, Billy’s known about you for as long as I’ve known him,” Goodnight said. He paused, a little embarrassed, and then made himself admit it. “I told him early on—he wanted to know just how hard it could possibly be to keep me on my feet, so I gave him a thorough accounting. Honestly, I think I wanted to see if he’d flinch. Petty of me, but given what I was drinking at the time…anyway, I know he’s been after you. He’s always after anything that’s going to get me killed. That’s the challenge for him.”

“I don’t know about that,” Sam said slowly. He tapped the table again. “He’s not a bodyguard these days, Goodnight.”

“He’s no fool either,” Goodnight snorted. “I entertain him, I have no illusions about anything beyond that.”

Sam raised his brows at Goodnight, but then, he never could help himself. Much as he tried to stick to business, there was that side of him that ended up looking a little beyond. That’d been what Goodnight had been counting on, had been what he’d been just trying to buy time till it could poke through, and to finally see it…Goodnight breathed in and out and Sam was still there and he would have smiled if he was confident that that alone wouldn’t just shatter him, he felt so unstrung.

“So I have you all, and I guess, if you’re going to stay, I’m going to have to figure out how to keep you,” Sam said after a moment. “Stiles said he might have something on that.”

“Oh,” Goodnight said. “Well, then, I suppose we should hear it out.”

* * *

They convened under the Nemeton’s broad branches, which wouldn’t have been Goodnight’s first choice. Or Sam’s, judging from the way he stood rather than take a seat on one of the rugged roots that broke up out of the ground here and there, but this was Stiles’ ground and he apparently preferred the spot to crowding them all into the kitchen, his largest room.

It would have been crowding, Goodnight had to admit. There was the six of them, and Stiles’ pack had been augmented by the addition of two men—a nervous one with the golden curls of a cherub called Isaac, and a calm but odd-smelling one called Jordan—and an older woman named Melissa. Isaac and Melissa were werewolves; Jordan was…undetermined.

“I think you’re supposed to be a werewolf,” Stiles said once they’d all made themselves as comfortable as possible.

Sam blinked hard. “Say that again?”

“You could have turned them all with just the claws, but that doesn’t explain the way you act around each other,” Stiles said. “You’re their _alpha_. You…”

Then, curiously, he seemed to falter. He glanced at Peter, who was standing behind him as he sat crosslegged on one of the largest roots, in a way that reminded Goodnight of how early on, Billy would look over for a translation. Odd, since he sounded perfectly American.

“Your mannerisms show you’ve recognized him as your alpha,” Peter said, gesturing towards Goodnight and Vasquez, who were closest. Then he turned to Sam. “And _your_ mannerisms show that you’re looking after them as if they were your pack. Chris was kind enough to share his observations, but honestly, they were hardly necessary. Five minutes in your company and any half-informed werewolf could tell that.”

“Well, I don’t know if Chris _shared_ that we’d been fighting together before this all happened, and death does tend to draw you closer,” Faraday drawled.

“Not like this,” Stiles said, shaking his head. “Besides, you—” he was addressing Sam again “—you feel almost like one.”

“Almost,” Sam said, without quite making it a question.

He didn’t seem offended by the idea, as far as Goodnight could tell. Or surprised, either. And to be honest, the idea wasn’t that much of a shock, which when Goodnight thought about it, probably was the surprise. Of course Sam wasn’t ordinary, not with what they’d seen to date, but if he’d had the abilities they now did, they wouldn’t have needed Rose Creek to take care of Bogue. And never mind keeping what they were a secret—if it would have put that man in a grave, Sam would have done it.

But the idea of it, Sam being akin to a werewolf…it felt right to Goodnight, the same way he felt right as he was squeezing the trigger and he _knew_ that it was all going to slide together, the wind and the angle and where his target was going to be when the bullet slammed out of his rifle. He knew it.

It also didn’t seem too shocking to Faraday or Vasquez either, and when Goodnight twisted around…well, Red Harvest wasn’t the simplest book to read, but Goodnight got the sense that this was all matching up for him too. Only Billy seemed to disagree, eyeing Sam a little askance as he did when he was searching for something.

“You’re not exactly it,” Stiles was saying, sounding puzzled himself. “And sometimes it doesn’t even—I can’t really describe it. It’s like it’s _wrong_ , like I’m going to look up and you’re going to shift into something completely different.”

“If he had that capability at all, he would have had to be bitten by one of you at some point, wouldn’t he?” Goodnight asked.

Stiles started to answer, but Faraday for some reason decided he was better-qualified. “We weren’t bitten,” he said. “And there was an opportunity for something like that to happen to him, as I recall.”

“I don’t really see how it’s your recollection if you weren’t there yourself,” Goodnight snapped. 

Faraday put his palms up but from the glint in his eye, he wasn’t remotely intending to soothe. “I’m just pointing out, based on what we know from firsthand experience and what we’ve been _told_ from those who did experience it,” he said, and then paused pointedly. “Or at least what they claimed to experience.”

Goodnight stiffened. “Son, are you calling me a liar?”

That glint in Faraday’s eye didn’t go away. It was the same look he got whenever he had the prospect of needling death, that Goodnight clearly remembered from before. But he didn’t smell quite as reckless as he looked; he had anger mixed in, and considerably less excitement than would be expected. And when Vasquez sidled over, clearing his throat at Faraday’s shoulder, a brief spike of relief made its way in there.

“Goodnight,” Sam said, quiet, like a hand at the elbow. Then he turned further, looking at Faraday, who was already trying to modulate his grin into something less antagonistic. “This isn’t the time—”

“He’s just asking whether something could have happened when you got hung,” Billy broke in. _He_ smelled calm, even when Goodnight twisted around to face him and their eyes met. “You were there right after, Goody. So close you saw some of them riding off, that’s what you told me.”

Vasquez looked up sharply, and so did Red Harvest. Sam frowned, then glanced at Goodnight.

“We haven’t discussed it,” Goodnight said, reluctantly. 

“Well, I don’t mind,” Sam said. 

Goodnight almost resented him for that, and then…he grimaced, looked down at the ground. “There’s not that much to say. I did ride in right after—but I just thought they hadn’t hung you long enough. The rope was already broken and he—you were lying on the ground, and you wouldn’t have been the first man to survive a botched hanging. I…there wasn’t enough time for anything, I would have thought.”

“But they had time to strike a deal,” Faraday said.

“That could have happened before the hanging,” Goodnight said irritably, glaring at the other man. 

Faraday looked surprised, and genuinely so, as if he really had no idea why Goodnight might take offense to his insinuations. “I’m just saying,” he said, and then looked annoyed himself as Vasquez made a low, almost inaudible noise, not quite a hiss but in the same warning line. “If we’re trying to figure out what Sam _is_ these days, and this all goes back to that one day and I’m just guessing, mind, because I wasn’t there, but it sounds like a hell of a lot happened—”

“If that had happened—if someone had brought me back from the dead like that, then I would’ve known who it was,” Sam said. To Stiles, who seemed less interested in the conversation than would’ve been expected and who’d been conferring with Peter on something. “Right? They all knew right away—they followed me out of that graveyard, followed me even before they knew how to change back.”

“And you most assuredly were _not_ a wolf when I found you,” Goodnight added.

“Yeah, I don’t think it was that,” Stiles said. “But…are you _sure_ you couldn’t have gotten bitten? It could’ve happened earlier—you don’t always turn right away. The bite can take a few days to heal, and you don’t have your first shift till it has.”

“No,” Sam said, but he’d paused. He pursed his lips, thinking, and then slowly shook his head. “No, no wolves in the days leading up. I would’ve remembered that, I’d think.”

“You’re thinking of something,” Billy said.

To Goodnight, who started because he’d thought he was just watching Sam, trying to figure out why the man was hesitating. He looked over at the other man, then frowned as Billy seemed to want to stare a confession out of him. “I wasn’t there till the day of the attack,” he said. “I would have no idea.”

Billy didn’t believe him. Which rubbed at Goodnight, rawer than he’d been expecting. The two of them just hadn’t seemed to understand each other since their respective resurrections, and that—that hurt, Goodnight wasn’t going to deny it, even if he was doing his damnedest to push the hurt down to a low ache. But he’d thought Billy _knew_ him; even if that was why he knew damned well never to expect the man to see him as more than he was, he’d made sure Billy did see him as that.

“You’re sure,” Lydia said dubiously. “There’s no possible way you could have been bitten?”

“It’s not something you’re going to mistake for something else,” Sam said, a little annoyed. He stared at her. “Besides, don’t you think I would have noticed being a werewolf at some point?”

Peter cleared his throat like a teacher delivering a reprimand. “We weren’t saying you were one, just that you—”

“Are supposed to be one, yeah, I got that,” Sam said, still sharp.

Some instinct pulled Goodnight’s glance to Stiles, who didn’t move except to change his posture but who somehow conveyed the strong impression that Sam needed to stop arguing with the others. Especially Peter, who shut his mouth and stepped back at the same time, throwing a pleased look at Stiles that would’ve gotten the two of them hung in more than one town.

“We’re asking because sometimes you bite people and they don’t turn into werewolves. The bite triggers…other things. If you’ve already got something different in your family, it’ll bring it up to the surface,” Stiles explained.

“Like me,” Lydia said. Which seemed to surprise Stiles, but after a quick grin he ceded the floor to her. “I’m a banshee, not a werewolf. That came to light after I was bitten.”

“Well, I don’t reckon I scream like you,” Sam said dryly.

Stiles shrugged. “There are a couple other things that you could be. But they all needed you to have been bitten by a werewolf to make sense.”

Sam inhaled to answer, then held it in. His brows pulled together, and then his eyes drifted away from Stiles as he thought. But when he’d finished, he was still shaking his head. “I don’t think so. I don’t think that was it. If something happened to me, it wasn’t me getting bitten.”

“He’d know,” Goodnight felt compelled to say. Billy was staring at him again and he ended up avoiding the man’s gaze, looking at Sam instead. “Only he would.”

Which was _true_ , Goodnight thought as Sam turned and caught the whole thing, and then gave Goodnight of all people a look like he wanted to know if they should keep going like this. Everything Goodnight had seen that day, or had thought he’d seen—it was all afterward. He hadn’t been there, that had been the goddamned _reason_.

“Ain’t like you would’ve made it better,” Sam said suddenly, very quietly. “You couldn’t have shot them all.”

Goodnight didn’t know what he was even talking about. Then he exhaled, hard. He looked at Sam again, and Sam didn’t seem to mind that Goodnight was half-thinking about hitting him and letting it show, and…Goodnight took another breath. Then stared up at the sky. He…wouldn’t say he felt better, but hell, he’d been living with this for a while. He could keep living with it.

“That’s not what I was asking,” Billy said, also quiet, and when Goodnight looked over, the other man met his gaze but showed the effort to do that. Which for Billy was as good as a session in the confessional.

“I thought we were having a discussion about this,” Faraday said, and when Goodnight turned to finally give the man a piece of his mind, Faraday hooked his chin towards the tree. “I don’t know about you, but usually I consider a discussion to mean everybody speaks the same language.”

Not the tree, he meant Stiles and Peter and Lydia, who now were in an increasingly intense conversation with each other. They weren’t trying to hide it but they also clearly didn’t care about any bystander commentary.

“What are they saying?” Sam said, frowning.

“They’re just—not sure which one this rules out,” Chris said, looking on. He seemed a little concerned, but not inclined to break in.

“Well, Sam’s not a walking corpse, I thought we’d ruled that out,” Goodnight said.

The three of them turned and stared at him, all varying shades of annoyed, and then they went back to discussing. “They weren’t talking about that,” Chris said, now amused. “That’s just the name of the book Stiles read.”

“You following this?” Sam said to Goodnight.

“I…” Goodnight caught Peter watching him, then smirking, and decided he did not like that man “…am not, unfortunately. My Latin studies weren’t that profound, and I’ll admit I didn’t much mind the War interrupting those.” 

“ _Latin_ ,” Faraday gawked. Then he recollected himself and shook his head. “Wonderful. _Two_ languages now where I can’t tell if somebody’s talking about the weather or the best way to murder a man.”

“We aren’t trying to hide anything,” Stiles suddenly said. “I just—learned some of this not in English, and it can be kind of hard to…to put it into English. It’s old stuff.”

“And the lack of information to work with isn’t making it any easier,” Peter added, looking as if he was taking personal offense to that. 

Sam exhaled, then glanced around the group. “Look, say I had been bitten by a werewolf, and I just can’t remember. What exactly are the things you think I could be?”

When he was asked to deliver rather than allowed to sit back and comment, Peter was considerably more mindful of himself. He looked at Stiles and then at Lydia, both of whom were intent on Sam. “Well,” he started.

“The _kanima_ ,” Red Harvest said abruptly. Then locked gazes with a very ruffled-looking Peter. “This is what our teachings warn against, if someone is bitten and they are not strong and their alpha is not strong, and does not look after them. What is inside of you becomes your outside.”

“I think we would’ve noticed if Sam there had started to grow scales and a pair of batwings,” Faraday pointed out. “Hell, I think _Bogue_ would have noticed. Could’ve just flown to his house in Sacramento and scooped him up.”

“A _kanima_ comes in a couple different forms. You don’t get to the one Chris said you saw right away,” Laura said.

“But this would have been a very long time ago. Years,” Vasquez said.

“Anyway, does the man look weak to you?” Faraday added.

The man was looking at Goodnight, and so, Goodnight belatedly realized, was Stiles. “You all right?” Sam asked in a low voice.

Goodnight shook his head, then dropped it into his hand and rubbed at his eyes. He’d already given it away, he thought, and—hell, he always did. When it mattered, he always did. Didn’t matter how it happened, whether it was in war or peace, he always gave it away.

“Hey,” Sam said, stepping towards him. When Goodnight looked up, Sam had his hand a few inches from Goodnight’s shoulder. He stopped it where it was, glancing at it and then at Goodnight’s face, and then carefully put it on Goodnight’s elbow. “Goodnight. Something wrong?”

“It might not be that,” Stiles said. He didn’t startle when Goodnight turned on him, though Lydia stiffened and Peter’s lips twitched back to reveal fangs before the man controlled himself. “This long after a bite, I have a hard time believing that too, because a _kanima_ usually turns pretty quick. They don’t want to have to think about it, so they get lost in the shift.”

Goodnight pressed his lips together. “Then what else?” he asked. “What else could it—could he be?”

He sounded hoarse, and now they were all looking at him. He grimaced and ducked his head again, and Sam curled his fingers into Goodnight’s arm. “We’re just figuring it out,” he told Goodnight quietly. “No harm in that.”

“You don’t think?” Goodnight hissed, before remembering about the hearing.

Peter and the rest of Stiles’ pack, Goodnight didn’t trust for an instant. Even Chris, Sam’s old partner, had his hand resting on his belt, and maybe it wasn’t against the gun but it wasn’t far off. His wife, Lydia…she was less poised, her arms folded over her chest, and as Goodnight watched she leaned over and whispered in Stiles’ ear that she’d predicted this. That wasn’t going to give Goodnight any comfort.

As for the men Goodnight had come with, Red Harvest was practically vibrating like a strung arrow, while Faraday and Vasquez had pulled up next to each other, intent, serious expressions on both. And Billy—

“Over here,” Billy said, and then smiled briefly, humorlessly, as Goodnight jumped. He’d squatted down, wasn’t even looking over. He just…kept on with whatever interested him, as if all the possibilities crowding around them weren’t even meaningful. “Whatever you’re seeing, Goody, it’s not there.”

“He sees things?” Laura asked curiously. “Like a seer?”

Derek shifted. “Like Gabrielle?”

“Do we know a Gabrielle?” Faraday asked, looking round.

He jumped when Goodnight suddenly broke out laughing, even though from the staged guilelessness of expression before, he’d known exactly what he had been doing. And he had suspicions too, he’d dropped plenty of hints of it, but Faraday was the type who just couldn’t let a moment of tension go without adding in his two cents, and just breaking it all up.

“Look, I think I want to look at the books again,” Stiles said. He’d been eyeing Goodnight, not Sam, and he only shifted back to Sam when Sam turned towards him. “I really thought you’d gotten bitten at some point, because otherwise—you _should_ have some idea who did this. You should have that—that link. They should’ve been able to find you.”

“Well, they did send a…” Faraday started ticking off his fingers “…dragon, a revenant, a pack of revenant _werewolves_ …”

“Yeah, but if they need all that, then they must not think they can take you in person,” Stiles said. “It’s like you’ve already beat them, or—anyway, let me check something.”

“Sure,” Sam said. He was still gripping Goodnight’s elbow. “We’ll mind ourselves in the meantime.”

* * *

Much to Goodnight’s surprise, Stiles’ pack let them go off on their own to the creek, and didn’t even set a chaperone on them. “Because they’ve got that tree to do that for them,” Faraday reminded them all. “Now, what was that all about?”

“What was what about?” Billy said.

Faraday stared at him for a moment, lips curled into a placeholder of a smile. Then they tightened into a genuine sneer. “You have to be joking. I know you and Robicheaux—actually, I don’t know. I can’t even tell at this point whether you two are aiming to bury the hatchet or take it to each other.”

“Well, you don’t really need to tell anybody anything,” Billy snorted. “Not that that stops you.”

“This isn’t what we came here to talk about,” Sam started.

“We are talking about what you could turn into,” Red Harvest said.

Sam paused and drew himself back to consider the other man, and then both of them stiffened as Billy threw up his hands and let out an aggravated noise. “Look, if you want to take a shot, then do it. You keep talking just like him—” he nodded at Faraday “—like if you do it enough, you’ll talk something into happening. Listening to this makes me wish I was dead again.”

“Are you serious?” Faraday said. He stopped and cocked his head, and then started to ease his body forward in a way that put Goodnight’s teeth on edge. “Because if you’re that eager for—”

Vasquez reached his arm around and planted his hand on Faraday’s chest, pushing the man back. “Josh, no.”

For some reason that caught Faraday more by surprise than by his temper, and he gaped at Vasquez long enough for the other man to properly sling his arm around Faraday and haul him off. It wasn’t more than a couple steps before Faraday started complaining…but he was allowing it. And Vasquez wasn’t doing more than just rolling his eyes.

“You have something you want to say?” Sam said, bringing Goodnight’s attention back to him and Red Harvest.

“I have _said_ it,” Red Harvest said. He looked like he always did, set in his own path and unwilling and uncaring as to whether it was obvious to others. Then his chin lifted slightly. “You should _not_ have to die.”

“Well, that’s a change in tune,” Goodnight couldn’t help saying.

Red Harvest didn’t acknowledge it. Sam did, glancing over, but then he sighed and looked at Red Harvest again. “You want to talk?”

In response Red Harvest gave him another long stare, and then the man moved his left shoulder. Sam shrugged and started to move in that direction. Then slowed, looking back at Goodnight, who shook his head. Sam paused another moment, and then he and Red Harvest went down the creek, the other way from how Faraday and Vasquez had.

So it was just Billy and Goodnight. Billy bared his teeth, not snarling at anything in particular, and then kicked his foot against the ground as he slouched against a nearby tree. “You can’t keep anything off your face,” he said. “Faraday’s not an idiot, and back at Reyes’ ranch he was poking around and asking things whenever he wasn’t waiting on Vasquez. He’s probably guessed half of whatever they’re thinking, and sooner or later he’s going to flash it around like one of his damn card tricks and get somebody killed.”

Goodnight stared at him.

Billy’s mouth twitched like he was going to snarl again, and then he shoved himself off the tree. “He’s changing, Goody,” he hissed. “I know—I felt it, when we were cornered back at the rocks. I had my arms around him and for a second he just—didn’t fit in that skin. And I think he knows. I know _you_ know, and—”

“He knows,” Goodnight muttered. Then had to put his hands on his knees, and his head between them, and breathe in and out. 

Being a werewolf hadn’t completely cured him, he thought, and a little gutless laugh spilled out of him. Well, of course not. Of course he’d just be as bad at taking a shock as he’d always been, and it was a shock, finally putting that into words. It—

He looked over, frowning, and then kept frowning as Billy made him sit down. “I thought you didn’t want to deal with me anymore,” he said.

Billy flicked his eyes to the sky, as if seeking guidance from the only personage that might have more patience than him, and sat next to Goodnight. “When did I say that?”

Goodnight started to reply, then caught himself. Then indulged himself in a short, airless laugh. “Well, all right, not in words, but in your…manner,” he said, waving one hand. Then, when the other man just stared flatly at him, he found a sudden rush of anger straightening his spine. “You know exactly what I mean. Ever since Sam brought us back—and I am sorry, Billy, I’m sorry I can’t help that, but you also knew about him long before. It’s not new, and why you suddenly seem to be taking it personally is beyond me.”

“I’m not taking it personally,” Billy said, smelling faintly surprised. He shifted, oddly restless, so his hands dropped between his knees. “You’re the one taking it personally, like he can’t make up his own mind about what he wants to do with his life.”

“Well, because I can’t—all right, I can’t let him _die_. Not now, not after—after I’ve known it myself, and thank God, I was given another chance,” Goodnight said. He paused, then shook his head. It wasn’t because he regretted the words. “I am a poor specimen of a man, I’ll admit to that. I haven’t done much in this world that I’m proud of, and haven’t been much of a friend to the only people who’ve looked for me—for _me_ , not for the—the Angel of Death, or some other terrifying story. But I like living, and I like my friends to be alive with me. I can’t help that.”

“Nobody’s asking you to change, Goody,” Billy sighed, looking at the sky again. “You want to keep Sam alive, that’s what you want. I don’t know if he agrees with you, but you want to fight that fight—”

“Then why _are_ we fighting?” Goodnight asked. He pushed down on his knee and turned to face the other man. “I thought we’d settled everything. That was the one thing I was thinking, right before I died, I thought I’d at least made that right.”

Billy jerked. It was hard to call it a flinch, with the kind of man he was, but…he looked sharply at Goodnight, body still angled away. His forearms rubbed against each other and when he realized Goodnight had noticed, he abruptly swung up his leg to shield them. “We’re not fighting.”

Goodnight looked at him. Then let out an aggravated noise, because no, he’d never wear a man down by staring the way Billy could, but he knew where his talents lay. “You cannot be serious.”

“I—” Then Billy shifted again. His nostrils flared repeatedly, and then he lifted one hand and swiped it across his nose, hard. It didn’t escape Goodnight’s notice that it was half-covered in black fur. “You came back and you were sleeping and you weren’t drinking. You were as level as that goddamn stretch of Kansas you made us go to that one time. I didn’t see anything to do till Sam started setting you off again.”

“We don’t need to fight over that,” Goodnight said, his temper cutting out on him as it was prone to do, as unreliable as courage in a bottle. 

“We’re _not_ ,” Billy said. Something happened with his hands and he glanced down, then looked back up, his face still twisted with frustration. “Goody, look, do I think you’ve got much of a chance of getting Sam to do what he doesn’t want to do? No. But that’s the fight you want to have, then fine. I never tell you what fights to pick.”

“Then why do you keep _leaving_ ,” Goodnight said. 

Not asked, said, and as soon as the words had exited his mouth, he knew he’d made a mistake. Some things you said, and when you said them you just acknowledged what had already been in the room; some things you said and your saying them was playing God, bringing to life what hadn’t been. And man wasn’t God, and didn’t Goodnight already know how that always ended.

Billy hadn’t moved away yet, and was just looking at him as if the man didn’t quite know how to label Goodnight, like the early days when he’d still been trying to match up the English to the thing. And it had been a very long time, Goodnight thought. Longer than he’d expected, certainly longer than he deserved. 

He was selfish a moment longer, and then he had to just see it out. “I’m asking the wrong question,” he said quietly. “It’s not the same thing as the drinking, or the opium, or the other things, Billy. Sam isn’t going to kill me—if I get killed, it’ll be entirely of my own doing, in my right mind. I mean, hell, I’m a goddamn werewolf. Dying by accident’s considerably harder to do these days. So there’s no reason to keep coming back.”

“I know Sam’s not going to kill you,” Billy said irritably. “I’m not actually looking to kill him, so stop worrying—”

“Then what are you doing?” Goodnight snapped. “You keep telling me I can’t look after Sam if he doesn’t want to be looked after, but you keep—”

“I didn’t come back as _this_ —” Billy abruptly waved his furred, clawed hand in front of them “—to see you lose your mind! I never did want to see that, I wanted to see you—and if that means I have to follow Sam around too so he doesn’t pitch himself off a cliff, then fine, Goody. Fine. I’m not doing anything else. Not with this.”

He showed his hand again. Even Faraday seemed to be managing that better, Goodnight had to admit. Back at the tree when they’d been arguing, Faraday hadn’t had a speck of fur on his knuckles, and for a professional poker player he had a hot temper. Billy, on the other hand, never so much as flinched, and yet here he was, gesturing as broadly as a minstrel performer, so much anger filling the air around him that Goodnight wouldn’t have been surprised to find that all the wildlife had fled.

“Are you upset that dying leveled me out?” Goodnight asked.

Billy pulled his hand in, then had to put his other one down to steady himself, he was taken that off-guard. “No,” he said, still startled, with a little offense mixed into it. Smelling a little…Goodnight wanted to say _sad_ , of all things. “No. It was good for you. It—that’s why I’ll stay if I have to, so Sam doesn’t get you—”

“I thought you’d stopped bothering because there was nothing for you to do,” Goodnight said after a moment. “And this thing that’s tying us together, that was what was eating at you, because if you didn’t have the work, then there was no point in you staying. Not much there for a partnership.”

“I think you thought clearer when you were half-drunk all the time,” Billy said in an exasperated tone. “If that was it, I wouldn’t give a damn if Sam was knocking you off again, because I would’ve finished up and it’d be your fault if it started again. I didn’t stop bothering, you idiot. I just stopped what you didn’t need anymore.”

Goodnight exhaled. Blinked, and looked at the world, and…it was so interesting, he couldn’t help thinking. It really was, and he could put that up against the moments after his resurrection and even then, this moment would stand out for just how…how much life everything seemed to have.

“I missed you,” he said. Then smiled when Billy just gave him a narrow-eyed, wary, confused look. “Coming back from the dead and you’re not wanting to have anything to do with me, and sure, Sam’s something I can’t avoid having an interest in, but…I missed you, Billy. I was worried you weren’t going to stay.”

Billy could tell Goodnight meant it. No matter how much disbelief wanted to get its hooks into him, and Goodnight could see that war happening in the man’s face, in the rigid set of his shoulders…he could tell. Even without all of these extra sensory trappings, he could tell.

“Sam,” Billy said. He made it something of a question, even though he was reluctant about it.

“Yes,” Goodnight admitted with a sigh. He lifted his hand, then thought it might be too early and put it back on the ground. “I am not much of a man, as I said. I want more than what’s my due. But, and I entirely understand if this makes no sense to you, I can need him to stay alive and want you to bother me to the end of our days, and I don’t believe the one subtracts from the other. God knows it might be easier on me if it did, but it doesn’t.”

Billy sat there, one arm wrapped around his knee, and studied Goodnight. His expression gave nothing away, as usual; his scent wasn’t much more of a guide, so quickly did it shift. Anger and surprise and confusion, they all took their turns at a dizzying rate. Then his lips tightened and Goodnight found himself holding his breath.

“You _always_ talk too much,” Billy said, and leaned over and kissed him for the first time since they’d come back from the dead.

Goodnight already had his hands twisted in the front of the man’s shirt, dragging at it. He’d always been that sort of man, dragging others, and even now when he believed he had something of a conscience, he still was the same. But he couldn’t bring himself to be ashamed of it, not right now, with Billy pressing after him, tongue darting just against his mouth and then, when he gasped, taking undisputed claim inside, palm sliding roughly up his knee—

He heard Billy’s heartbeat switch paces before he even smelled the alarm on the other man, and knew it maybe even before that. He had his hand clamped over Billy’s well before Billy tried to withdraw it, because he might be a selfish, needful son of a bitch, but when he _did_ get what he wanted, he damn well tried to hold onto it.”

“Let—damn it, Goody,” Billy hissed, twisting at his hand. “I can feel—I got you—”

“It goddamn heals, Billy,” Goodnight said. He twined his fingers around the man’s hand, even when the prick of a claw-tip caught him, pressing their foreheads together. “Sometimes it heals and this is one of those times and hell, even if it didn’t—”

“Well, that’s why you hired somebody to mind you in the first place,” Billy muttered. But he held. He held, and let Goodnight hold him, and eventually, once he’d succumbed to a ragged breath, the claws went away.

They were both still breathing fit to burst a rib, but thankfully, Billy didn’t seem inclined to lever himself off of Goodnight. He curled his hand a few times; the first time, Goodnight thought he was still trying to get loose and squeezed, getting a dry chuckle out of Billy, then a graze of cheeks together. Then, sighing, he seemed to settle. He flexed his hand one more time, then gingerly smoothed it back out over Goodnight’s knee, even though the skin he’d raked had long since knitted up.

“You’re not…it’s not because I _can’t_ have Sam,” Goodnight felt compelled to say. “He’s there, but you’re—different.”

“You said already,” Billy said. He pulled back enough to look into Goodnight’s face, and his own face had relaxed enough to show the weariness. Which was rare: he’d drop one of his knives before he let enough tension out to let the fine wrinkles around his eyes and mouth come through. “You talked enough, Goody. Fine. We’ll get him to however he needs to be, so you can stop worrying.”

Goodnight started to say something and Billy sighed, and something about it was so endearingly resigned that Goodnight laughed instead. Completely inappropriate, but even before he smelled the amusement, he could pick out the slight curve of the man’s mouth.

“I just…can’t think it can end like this, not for someone like him,” Goodnight told him instead. “Not after everything he’s gone through, not after he finally laid his family to rest—and that’s what he did back there. After all that, for him to.”

He stopped. Billy kept watching him, hand steady and warm on Goodnight’s leg, and the man already knew. Of course he did.

“He can’t be something like that _kanima_ ,” Goodnight finally said, and then had to take a deep breath directly afterward. “So lost inside that it shows to the rest of the world like that—he can’t be. It can’t happen.”

“I already told you,” Billy said. His fingers tightened on Goodnight’s knee and he leaned in, his mouth no more than a ghost across Goodnight’s lips, before he got to his feet. “Not going to happen.”

And looking up at him, a little exasperated but already looking out, as if Faraday hadn’t ever ridden up to that corral, Goodnight truly believed it.

That was when the cold _ripped_ through them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have Stiles being born in America, but into a relatively large extended family (at the time) consisting mainly of Polish immigrants who, being werewolves, kept to themselves and kept up a lot of their old traditions, including speaking Polish among themselves. Neither Peter nor Lydia know the language, but all three of them have learned Latin so that's their lingua franca when Stiles is trying to explain more obscure points of the supernatural.
> 
>  _Magnificent Seven_ couldn't totally seem to make up its mind whether Faraday or Robicheaux was supposed to be Sam's right-hand man. My take is that Faraday's a tad immature yet for it, while Robicheaux's issues keep him from fully inhabiting the advisor role, so there's some push-pull tension. And also Sam's the kind of loner who has to think to really work in a group.


	15. Chisolm

Sam couldn’t honestly blame Red Harvest for most of the way the man had acted since Rose Creek. He had tried to warn Sam about some of this, and even if he’d used some roundabout ways of going about it—well, at this point they all knew a lot of it had to do with whether Sam was alone in his own head or not, and if not, then being careful about what Sam knew made sense. Besides, at the start of it all Sam had been trying to _not_ understand, and so maybe Red Harvest had been more direct. He wouldn’t trust his memory on that.

But something that did get under Sam’s skin was how the man kept insisting the key to all of this was something _Sam_ knew. “I told you—I’ve told all of them what I know,” Sam finally snapped. “I can’t remember anything more, and believe me, I’ve tried.”

“I don’t believe that,” Red Harvest snapped back, gesturing sharply at the direction from which they’d come. He got a lot more demonstrative when you got him on his own, at least when it was Sam. “You and Goodnight, you’re always looking at each other when we talk about this. I believe that _he_ doesn’t know, but you? You know.”

Sam exhaled, and reminded himself that these days, the others could apparently tell when he was about to lose his temper. Faraday would just make it worse, and Billy and Goodnight…well, he was hoping those two would finally sort things out, before he had to say something, since God knew he wasn’t a natural at diplomacy even when he could concentrate on it. And he had other things on his mind right now. “That’s very kind of you on Goodnight.”

Red Harvest snorted. “He has too much of you in his head. If you don’t want to remember, he won’t.”

“How do you know that?” Sam said, once he’d steadied his breath.

From the way that Red Harvest tensed, he didn’t do that well enough. The man was armed with at least one knife that Sam could see, while Sam had left his gun back in the cabin upon Peter’s request, and he still looked as if he’d go on the defensive if it came down to it. 

“How do you know?” Sam repeated, when Red Harvest didn’t answer. “You need to tell me what that means. You’ve been trying to get my attention this whole time—well, you have it, so tell me what the hell you meant by that.”

Red Harvest stared at him, and for a moment Sam thought this was just going to be the same routine all over again, just dropping a hint or two and then getting angry when Sam didn’t pick up the rest of the trail. And Sam hadn’t cared that much before, back when he’d just been looking to close everything out, but at some point along the way, he’d changed his mind. He wanted to _know_. This was confusing, and because it was confusing it was infuriating, and at this point his temper just wouldn’t lie down anymore. He _had_ to know.

“Well, if you won’t say, then I’ll go find Stiles,” Sam muttered. Not that he held much hope in that direction, but at least the man admitted when he wasn’t sure.

He turned to go, then stopped as Red Harvest made a noise. When he looked back, the other man hadn’t moved, but he was looking…like he wanted to put his hand out. “You need to stop this,” Red Harvest said, and a thread of urgency was pushing through his usual irritation. “The full moon is almost here. If you still are not sure what you are, then I worry that you never will. If you don’t—”

“If I don’t what?” Sam snapped, his temper fraying. “If I don’t sleep? If I don’t say some magic words? I don’t know what you think I know, but I don’t know what I _did_. I don’t know. I don’t know what I did back at Rose Creek, I don’t know what I did back at—at Lincoln, and you can tell me all day long that I do but that doesn’t mean a thing.”

Red Harvest pressed his lips together. “You have to know,” he said, and then he did raise his hand. “You are the only one who could—unless Goodnight saw what happened, but he and you both say—”

“He rode up after it was all done,” Sam said. Then had to step back and take a moment, because even now, he didn’t like recalling it. 

What’d happened to his mother and his sisters—that had pushed to the front for a long time, and had stuck there, too raw and deep for anything else to come through. When he’d woken up in the middle of the night, that had been it, and not what had happened to himself. He hadn’t wanted to remember it but he had had to, had had to keep that in his face so he knew what he was getting up to do. But sitting in that church with Emma Cullen and a dead man at his feet…a dead man, nothing more, just another one in a long line…he’d felt that go. Felt them go and rest, like they had always deserved.

So when he’d started hearing them again, it’d been habit as much as surprise that had kept him from realizing right away it wasn’t just his memories. He’d just been _used_ to them, his ghosts, and hadn’t had long enough to not get used to them. Maybe he’d even missed them.

But that wasn’t them trying to call him, he knew that now. And since they weren’t crowding up his mind, he had the space for what had happened to him. He didn’t like it, and it hadn’t been what had driven him back to life, but…if the rest of this was going to be put to rest, he’d dig into it. “He came right after—could’ve gotten caught by them if he’d been there just a couple more minutes—but it was after,” Sam went on. “Whoever I was talking to, we’d already wrapped up. I was already on the ground, the rope was already—”

 _Snapped_ but the word wouldn’t come off Sam’s tongue for some reason. He frowned and Red Harvest apparently took it as a signal. “But he saw something,” he said to Sam. “Something he has not wanted to tell the rest of us, but that he knows you also saw.”

“I don’t know everything that’s in Goodnight’s head, all right? I don’t know if that means what you think,” Sam said, his temper starting to rise again. He exhaled and looked off to the side—he couldn’t see Goodnight and Billy from here, but…hell. He didn’t need to bother them now. “He thinks I—he thinks I want to ride off and tell the Devil I’m ready to go home with him. Makes him nervous, and when he’s nervous, he starts seeing things all over the place.”

“But the things he sees can be things we need to know,” Red Harvest said. Then tensed as Sam looked sharply back at him. He hesitated—actually gave away that he was hesitating. “They said you should be a werewolf. But I am not sure what you are.”

Sam spat out a harsh chuckle. “That’s not what you’re making us all think.”

“It is not my fault if you think things without knowing, and think they are the same,” Red Harvest spat back. He moved his shoulders in a rough, rolling movement. “I know what you _could_ be, that is why I am—frightened.”

“Frightened?” Sam said.

“Frightened,” Red Harvest said, and they were speaking in Comanche so there wasn’t any possibility that he was using a word he didn’t mean to use. He didn’t look away as he said it. “Shapeshifters are not…monsters, just a different tribe with a different path. So when one appears, they always leave to find their own way, but we do not hunt them and they do not hunt us. But when there is one who does not know their path, and they become the _kanima_ that your friend named—”

“Wait a minute,” Sam sighed. “Look, I know I haven’t doing my best thinking, but if you think I want to be that thing—well, I _don’t_. And if something like that’s about not knowing what you want to be, that’s not my problem.”

“I know that,” Red Harvest said, irritated again. “If you were just a _kanima_ , this would be easy and I would just cut off your head.”

Sam and he looked at each other, and then Sam gave him a bemused shrug. “Guess I should be glad it’s not easy.”

“But I think that is what they want,” Red Harvest went on, ignoring Sam’s comment. “They want you to have nothing to keep you on your path. They want what the _kanima_ is—just a slave for them to call.”

“Well, I’ve been that, fought a war to get out of it,” Sam snapped. “I _know_ that can’t have been what they were offering because I wouldn’t have taken that deal, even for my family.”

“Then what did they offer?” Red Harvest asked. Then raised his hand to stop Sam when Sam started to repeat his story. “No. It cannot have been the men. They don’t want others, they want you, and they are trying to _kill_ the others because Goodnight, all of them, they _keep_ you on your path.”

It made…sense. Sam thought it over and by the strange logic of the life they were now living, it made sense. None of the attacks had been directly at him, and all the things he’d heard—all of them had been about him on his own. He’d only stayed because of the others.

And yet something in him still wanted to protest anyway—had been protesting since he’d heard the noises in the coffins and realized what he’d really done. He’d just rounded up the nearest men he could find who’d take on a suicide mission, he wanted to say. He hadn’t tried hard at it, and his path…but all right, he thought. That had been then, and now he did seem set to walk this earth a little longer. He wasn’t so angry now, thinking about it. Having company hadn’t ever been something he counted on, aside from his family, but even if he hadn’t bargained for it—

And then ice went all through him, and he _remembered_.

* * *

As far as Sam could tell, he hadn’t passed out or anything like that, and the rest of them running up had caught Red Harvest as off-guard as himself. But Goodnight still insisted that they go back to one of the cabins and talk about it ‘where there aren’t so many damn trees to keep an eye on.’

“Just do what he says and let him calm down,” Billy muttered, watching as Goodnight stalked after Peter, demanding to know what Stiles had ‘just stepped out’ to do. “He ran through one trying to get to you and swears it was the Nemeton.”

“Aren’t those pine needles on him?” Faraday said, overhearing. He sniffed pointedly. “It’s definitely pine sap smeared all over his—”

They’d ended up in the room Sam and Goodnight had been sharing in the main cabin, and since Billy had been shy about his knives since turning into a werewolf, Goodnight had been keeping most of them in his saddlebag. Billy flipped open the top and somehow flipped out a knife at the same time, catching it casually as it spun back down towards the bag.

“All right,” Faraday said, holding his hands up. He was eyeing the knife more than Billy, though he was trying to make light of it. “Well, I can see we’ve settled at least a few things.”

To Sam’s eye, Billy still seemed more guarded about his blades than he had been, looking down as he sheathed the knife when before he wouldn’t have bothered, but the blade went into his belt, not back into his bag. He didn’t even bother looking over at Faraday, just flopped himself into a nearby chair.

“You like it when he talks himself into a fight?” he said to Vasquez, in rough but serviceable Spanish.

Vasquez blinked hard, once, and then finished taking a seat on a bench up against the wall. “I could ask you the same,” he said in a mild tone, stretching his legs out and then sighing in relief.

Faraday eyed them both, then looked at Sam. “You know what they’re saying?” he said, plaintive tone already showing he knew the answer.

“Just have a seat,” Sam said, taking pity on him.

Before Faraday could reply, Vasquez put one leg out and pushed another bench towards the man. Then slouched back on his own, offering up an amused grin as Faraday glowered at him.

“Well, hell, I guess there’s just no point pretending we’re not in each other’s business now,” Faraday muttered as he folded himself onto the bench. He glanced over as Goodnight’s voice rose sharply, then rubbed one hand over his ear, wincing. “So, Sam, you planning to turn into a dragon and fly off?”

“No,” Sam said.

Faraday glanced up again as Red Harvest decided to sit on the other end of his bench rather than take the usual standing pose. It wasn’t making him rethink his course of action, Sam could tell that. “You planning to take up the alpha position and make this a pack?”

He'd talked to Vasquez about it, Sam decided. The man had tensed, but he’d looked at Billy first, then Sam. Just maybe not all the details, since after that Vasquez unfolded his arms and gripped the edge of his bench, angling himself so it’d be Faraday he’d tackle first.

“I told you this before, but I’ll say it again. You want to go, I’m not going to hold it against you,” Sam said. Then paused, since the arguing in the other room had fallen silent. There weren’t any footsteps back and he raised his voice a little. “I guess this part is new—I have no hold on you. What I did, I didn’t do for you, I did it for me. I admit that. And so…so if you want to stay, you should know that I’m going to figure this out. You all fought for me, and if there’s any debt here, it’s in that. I owe you. So I’ll do what I can to live up to it.”

It was hard to read them all afterward, even Faraday, whose brow wrinkled for a second like that hadn’t been quite what he’d been expecting. Then it smoothed out and he just sat back, narrow-eyed, studying Sam, all the sharp play pushed aside so he could assess the situation like a man about to sign his life away. Sam hated speeches partly for this reason, the part where everyone just looked on and he had nothing more to say, but it felt like they meant to pull more out of him anyway. But he swallowed that down and bore up, and just waited it out.

“You have nothing else to do now, eh?” Vasquez said, finally breaking the silence. 

Sam smiled a little, then nodded. “Appears not.”

“Well, except for the small matter of finding out who wants to kill you.” Goodnight had finally returned and was standing in the doorway. He warmed when Sam looked over, a softness in his eyes that pricked Sam in the chest. Then that went away and he was sober and hell-bent on business. “Look, Sam, does it matter what you are right now? You heard him, he said you’re supposed to be like u—a werewolf. And it’s not a bad way to live.”

“Still a couple things to iron out,” Faraday muttered, and then flicked Vasquez a look when the other man nudged his end of the bench. Then he straightened up and looked at Sam. “Granted, I’d take it over dying. And together does seem to be our best chance at avoiding that.”

“You can live long enough, maybe you even learn some Spanish, _guero_ ,” Vasquez said. Then turned to Sam while Faraday was cursing at him. “So how do we make you a werewolf? We are not alphas, and if the alpha here bites you, you will be one of his.”

Billy shook his head. “No, they said you can leave if you want.”

“But then there’s still a link. They also said that, and Sam’s already got enough trouble,” Goodnight started to say.

“There were wolves,” Sam said, deciding he’d heard enough. He couldn’t just sit there, bemused, and wonder at how…how _easy_ it was, because it wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t even close to over. All he’d done, he told himself, was finally admit that it’d started, and that was barely anything. “Goodnight, you remember that too. There were wolves in Lincoln.”

Goodnight didn’t want to leave his talk with Billy, but then he paid proper attention and he went pale enough for Billy to come half off the chair. He shifted and Billy stopped, then sat back, reluctant as hell.

“Wolves?” Faraday asked sharply.

“After,” Goodnight finally said. He shook his head. “After, of course there were. You had bodies lying all over the place and the blood—and there just weren’t enough people alive to chase them off before we could bury them.”

“No, before too,” Sam said quietly. “You saw them when you were coming in, you said.”

Goodnight moved his head slightly, as if he was going to shake it again, but he wasn’t much good at hiding things at all, and never could do it for a second with Sam. “They could’ve been hunting dogs,” he finally said. “I wasn’t that close, and hunting—that’s what they were after, and—”

“So he was bitten,” Red Harvest said.

That nearly got him Goodnight upon him, but before Goodnight could do more than twist on his heel, Sam got up. “No, wasn’t bitten,” he said. “There were wolves, but they were only biting the dead. They were following a man, not Bogue, but one of the ones running it for him—it _was_ a hunt, he was having them run people down in the fields, but they’d bring them back to the trees and hang them. And he and I, when they were stringing me up, we talked.”

“Talked,” Faraday said.

Vasquez made a low warning noise in his throat. Goodnight twitched at it, but kept his eyes on Sam. He was milk-white under his beard, making his eyes glitter like ice. “You didn’t make a deal,” he said slowly.

“No deal. I remembered him telling me who had really set it all up, telling me it was Bogue, and then he made me an offer,” Sam told him. “Said he liked my anger. But I didn’t take it. I thought I had, because I woke up and you were over me—”

“You said you’d _died_ ,” Goodnight said.

“I _did_. I did, it’s just he didn’t bring me back,” Sam said. “He didn’t bite me—I bit _him_.”

Someone else was listening too, Sam suddenly knew. Just had it in the back of his head, sitting there the way that he thought he must sit in the other men’s heads. Except…he hoped it didn’t feel this way to them, this cold, malingering pull, where every time he pushed it away, he felt a little bit stick and come back with him. It was like he’d put his finger in tar and couldn’t scrape it off, except with this, what he pulled back tried to pull _him_ back.

“I bit his wrist. He was tying off the rope and I bit his wrist, and wouldn’t let go, and that’s why the rope broke, I think,” Sam said. “They strung me up but I wouldn’t let go of it so they did it too quick, trying to choke me off.”

“Then that was his paw,” Goodnight said. “The one you found next to you.”

Sam wasn’t sure of that, he started to say—it made sense, but then it didn’t. A man’s wrist was thick and bony, even…and then that cold in his head twisted and he thought it was trying to get in further, and—

Goodnight and Faraday, the two nearest, both reached for him, just as something _else_ got into his head. Something deep and dark and full of earth, he thought, just before he stumbled back and got his hand on the back of his chair.

“Gone,” he grunted. He caught his breath—he was gasping—and looked up and found the rest of them looking just as bad. Even Red Harvest, who had some handful of feathers and stones out as if he meant to do something with it, he had a face like when that _kanima_ had come up. “Hell. What…”

But then, he knew what, even before Stiles cleared his throat and stepped past Goodnight into the room. “The Nemeton’s keeping him off for now, but you can’t stay here forever,” the man said.

Sam shook his head again, trying to rid himself of that cold, and then looked up. “Oh, I wasn’t planning on it. I know we’ve got to deal with each other again, now that I remember—I took something of his, didn’t I? And he wants it back.”

“What’s going on?” Billy said, just short of a snap. “He wants _what_ back?”

“We can take your pain. You know this, right?” Stiles said, looking over. When Billy didn’t immediately answer, he lifted his hand.

“Yeah. Yeah, Goodnight was doing that to Vasquez, back before he got the better deal,” Faraday broke in.

Stiles seemed a little confused by that, but he didn’t stop to ask questions. “Alphas can do more—they can heal. But it takes a lot, and if you’re not careful it’ll drain you so that you’re not an alpha anymore, or maybe even till you die.”

“So that’s what I took,” Sam said. “Because he didn’t want to heal me. I just—I think I made him. I pulled that out of him.”

“That explains why you didn’t turn right away,” Stiles said, nodding agreement. “And maybe you wouldn’t have ever noticed and it would’ve just been you healed yourself, but when you brought them back, I think it started something in you. So you’re going to have to choose now, because if you turn, that’s when he’ll be able to find you.”

* * *

According to Stiles, Sam probably hadn’t bitten off the alpha’s hand. The alpha had probably cut or torn it off himself, once he’d realized Sam was doing, in an effort to stop it. But it’d been too late and Sam had revived himself with the alpha’s power, not through any deal.

“If he’d come with a pack, and they were behaving the way you say, he would have run off right away so they wouldn’t turn on him,” Stiles had said. His lip had kept curling in disgust and Peter, who’d come back shortly after he’d started explaining, had kept making a quiet, low, rolling noise that had reminded Sam of a cat his youngest sister had had for a few months. “He survived losing his hand so I’m pretty sure you didn’t take the werewolf out of him, but if he wasn’t an alpha, he wouldn’t be able to control the rest of them.”

“He could be an alpha again now,” Peter had said. “It’s been more than long enough, and he obviously has resources.”

“Yeah, probably,” Stiles had agreed. “But it wouldn’t be the same—I read up about when that happens. They’re never the same. So that’s why he’s still coming after you, this many years later. He was probably hoping you’d just die and it’d come back to him that way, but if you’re turning, you’ll keep his power for good.”

And then, per Stiles, they’d sat down and had a meal. It hadn’t been quite midday, but most of them had been up since dawn and for all that they’d barely moved, everyone seemed to relish the chance to stock up. For once Vasquez wasn’t the only one trying to pour his plate down his throat.

“I think we need more, now,” Goodnight said, finding Sam by the tree later that afternoon. “I don’t take the hunger pangs as well as I used to, and…”

“You’re finding some of the wildlife more attractive than usual?” Sam said, watching Goodnight watch a ground squirrel skitter in and out of some bushes.

The animal stayed well clear of the Nemeton’s root spread, and the tolerant look Goodnight shot Sam just then didn’t hide the fact that the man was doing the same thing. “You know I’ve always been partial to game, so that’s not such a hardship,” Goodnight said. Then sucked his breath as Sam stepped right up to the trunk. “Sam—”

“I told you all, I’m sticking around,” Sam said. “And Stiles said I don’t owe it for clearing out my head, remember—this thing just thinks someone intruded on its territory, it wasn’t even thinking of me.”

“For which I am grateful,” Goodnight said. He was audibly gritting his teeth. “From a distance.”

Sam stayed up by the tree a moment longer. He could feel it the way you could feel a gaze on the back of your head, but it was just that: a gaze. Watching him, nothing else. When he backed off, it felt exactly the same.

Goodnight let out a sigh of relief and didn’t bother to hide it, or look embarrassed by it. He was walking close when the two of them headed back into the cabin, for all that Billy was overseeing the whole thing from the front porch. Still, when he went up the steps, Billy was the one he was looking for, and Billy, Sam was glad to see, seemed to be just as expectant.

“I don’t have any problem with turning into a werewolf,” Sam said, just to answer the question Goodnight had been chasing him over.

At least, that was what he figured, but when he said that, Goodnight peeled off from Billy and continued to follow him inside. “As far as I’ve gathered from Reyes’ pack and from Stiles’, the way this all works is as immutable as any other social custom. You’re a pack until you don’t want to be. You’re an alpha until your pack decides they’d rather have someone else.”

“You trying to reassure me about something?” Sam asked, finally turning.

“I’m saying, Sam,” Goodnight said. He paused, eyes flicking over Sam’s face. “That we’ll follow your lead, even if you come over and you don’t have all the trappings.”

Because even if he was turning, no werewolf turned into an alpha: alphas were made or born. He’d start out the same as them. Sometimes Goodnight’s gentry birth just couldn’t help itself, Sam thought.

“Something funny?” Goodnight asked, brows rising.

“I never was much worried about that. Either you will or you won’t, and if you don’t, like I said, I’m not going to hold it against you,” Sam said with a shrug. But he could feel the smile fading off his face as he went on. “I don’t understand it, I’ll admit, but I won’t turn it down.”

“Because you’re someone who looks back,” Goodnight said, stepping forward. His voice was suddenly tight and intense, to the point Sam had to catch himself from looking for Billy. “Even when you were just looking for an end to this—you didn’t leave us in that graveyard. You can’t help it, Sam—we see that. That’s why.”

Sam took a breath, then let it out. Then frowned as Goodnight’s expression shifted from stern to amused. The man pressed his lips together, only to have them split apart by a chuckle. He dropped his head into the laugh and his knee bumped into Sam’s knee, they were standing that close. He looked up—Sam got him by the shoulder, held him, and then smiled himself, wry, as Goodnight bit his lip and looked down again.

“Hell,” Goodnight muttered. Then he shook his head, still looking down. “Hell, Sam, I’m…well, you know.”

“It’s all right,” Sam said. He let the man lean into his grip, more than was needed, and then gently pushed back. “You and Billy, you’re all right now?”

“I think tolerates is the word,” Goodnight said, finally pulling his head back up. His face was full of regret and appreciation both, and…always that little bit of wistfulness. Sam didn’t understand that either, he thought. “Anyway, that’s for him and me to work out. You…”

“We need to get me to be a werewolf. That’s a target to aim at, and that’s half the fight,” Sam said. “The rest will get sorted out.”

Goodnight wanted to sort it out right there and then, said his face, but even he seemed to realize how unreasonable that was. When Billy called him, saying Lydia had something she wanted to discuss, he didn’t make a fuss about going.

They took up most of the afternoon talking about various plans, and then some of the time after dinner. It was the full moon tonight and that made a lot of werewolves quicker on the trigger than usual, or so they were being told—Stiles’ pack was gathering together again, since apparently they dealt with it by going on a big group hunt and running it out of their system. Lots of bustle, lots of conversation…if there was something to the whole full-moon matter, it was how Sam’s nerves started to itch.

He slipped outside, going back to the tree. Nobody, not even Stiles’ pack, seemed to want to spend much time under it, and there was enough going on that even Goodnight had gotten distracted.

Not Stiles, who came out just a few minutes later. “I thought it wasn’t pushing at you anymore,” he said.

“It’s not, but I can still tell it’s there,” Sam said.

Stiles sighed. “Well, it’s always going to do that. I can’t make it stop.”

“Didn’t ask you to,” Sam said.

That earned him a long, considering look. Stiles unnerved some of the others—Faraday showed it the most, which was probably the opposite of what he wanted with his little asides—and Sam could see why. Peter was condescending at best, but that could come up in any place. But Stiles wasn’t so different from the Nemeton, in that he wasn’t the flashiest but he always seemed to be there and always seemed to know what had just happened, or what was going to happen. 

Then again, Sam thought, watching wasn’t the same as judging. Those two, they watched. This alpha he’d taken power from—he judged, and he thought it was just to get back what was his.

He’d taken Sam’s _life_. Sam had blamed Bogue that for a long time, and still blamed the man. Bogue had made the decision, he’d sent in the men, and without him, Sam’s family would still be alive. He’d taken that from Sam, family. That had been first, and then after that, Sam’s life. Sam hadn’t tried to hunt down every man present at Lincoln that day; he’d only remembered the man who had started it all. But he’d settled with Bogue and his family was now not on his mind. Only his life.

And the lives of the others in it, he thought. Because this was his life now, strange and unexpected as it was. This was what he’d made of it, with the life he’d taken back under the hanging tree, and he found that he wanted it. 

Or maybe, he thought, he was just remembering properly.

“This tree makes you think,” Sam said. “I don’t mean it gets into you, it just…”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know, you can’t hide. It doesn’t really understand like another person, but it can see you no matter what,” Stiles said, still looking at him. “You can’t pretend you want something you don’t, not in front of it.”

Sam nodded. He wanted this, he thought, and as he did, his skin started to prickle. Up at his neck, over the scar—he put his hand into his shirt-collar, then took it out. Then, looking up at the darkening sky, he put his hand back up and started taking off his clothes.

He got off his boots just as someone called them from the porch—Goodnight, catching up, as he always did. Sam ignored him and straightened up and the rising moon was just over the top of the Nemeton now, so big and present that it seemed something he could touch. And he just…

Changed.

He could see what Goodnight meant now, about saying it was like breathing. It _wasn’t_ different, what he was. He was still himself, and this was what he should be. Never mind if someone thought he’d taken it from them—this was _his_ life, and no one else could have it. He would fight on that.

“Stiles,” someone else called. Peter, also on the porch, voice rising in alarm. 

“We’re not fighting,” Stiles said, half-absently, because he was staring at Sam. His eyes were wide—his heartbeat, Sam could hear his _heartbeat_ now, and instinctively knew it was faster than it needed to be. “We’re not, but…oh, you’re _that_.”

“One of what?” Goodnight said, sounding anxious. “He’s a wolf! He’s a wolf, same as us—”

“Oh, yes, but he’s—you’re alpha already,” Stiles said. “No wonder he’s sending an army after you.”

He bent down, his hands on his knees, so he and Sam were level with each other. Not submitting, just greeting, and that was right, Sam thought. Sam didn’t want to fight the other man either, but he wanted Stiles to know he wasn’t going to bend his head.

Stiles grinned at him, eyes suddenly red as blood. Sam stiffened, the sight of bared teeth tugging on instinct first, but then he calmed down as he stared at the other man. No…no fight here.

He turned around and looked at the porch. Goodnight had come down off of it and a few steps towards him, while Billy was still on the steps. Faraday and Vasquez were both still on the porch, leaning against the rail and looking out. Red Harvest was standing a few feet away from them, and for once he looked impressed.

Sam lifted his head and Goodnight twitched. Then breathed in sharply as Sam padded up to him, raising his nose as Goodnight put out a cautious hand. That wasn’t—Sam batted it aside with his muzzle and then stood back, a little surprised at himself. That wasn’t right, he knew that, but he wasn’t quite sure why.

Billy came down the rest of the steps, then stopped as Goodnight swept his hand back, frowning at Sam. Goodnight was too high, Sam thought, and just then Goodnight squatted down. He steadied himself with one hand on the ground, head bobbing lower than Sam for a moment, and then went still. His shoulders started to shake and Sam nosed at one, and then Goodnight just broke out into peals and peals of laughter.

“ _Of course_ ,” he said in between them. “Of course, of course, goddamn it, Sam, only you would—you just had to _think_ it. That’s all we had to wait for, just for you to decide you wanted it.”

Sam took another step back and Goodnight glanced up. Then, still laughing, he pulled his clothes off and shook himself into a wolf, and promptly rolled over onto his back, neck stretched out under Sam’s muzzle.

That felt right, even if Goodnight was still, even as a wolf, laughing fit to burst. Sam sniffed at Goodnight’s throat and Goodnight flopped over onto his side and lifted his head, mouth open in a grin, tongue threatening to hang out. The occasional laugh still made him quiver all over, even down to the tail-tip.

“Goody,” Billy sighed, shaking his head. When Sam looked over, the man had already stripped off his shirt.

“I thought we were having pie,” Faraday said on the porch.

“Can you save some?” Vasquez asked Laura, who was standing near him, and then added a compliment on her cooking in Spanish. He was unbuttoning his shirt-cuffs.

Faraday blinked, then let out an annoyed sound. “Am I honestly the only one around here who doesn’t speak Mexican?”

“So take these off and speak wolf instead,” Vasquez said, giving him a slap on the back. 

Then Vasquez hopped over the rail, leaving an offended Faraday to follow him, and soon they’d joined the rest of them under the tree. Even Red Harvest came down, walking past the piles of clothing till he was standing right in front of Sam. 

“I am glad,” he said simply.

Sam grinned at him, then felt an itch across his shoulders. He didn’t change back, just arched them and when he had finished, he found himself looking at the woods beyond the Nemeton. He could _smell_ it too, smell the leaves and the earth and the animals. Fur and musk and blood, he could pick each out and somehow he knew what they were. 

He was _hungry_ , he realized. His teeth ached. He snapped his jaws a few times and the ache went down but didn’t go away.

“Stay east, we’ll take the west this time,” Stiles said. He skirted the edge of their group, much to Peter’s visible relief, and then paused when he was between them and the house. “Have a good hunt.”

The words came a little muffled, and Sam needed some effort to look away from the woods. But he understood what the man was saying. He didn’t think that that would be a problem, looking over the four other wolves that were gathering around him. They’d hunt, all right—to the east. There wasn’t a fight here, he reminded himself.

But…he lifted his head again, pricking his ears, and something cold seemed to pass through him. Cold and dead-smelling and angry. His lips instinctively writhed back and he looked over in that direction. Then back, startled out of the near-snarl as something pressed up against his flank.

Goodnight rolled onto his back again, but kept his head up to nose at Sam’s jaw as Sam blinked down at him. Worried, Sam smelled off him. Sam huffed out his nose—he still could smell the other one—and stepped back and Billy eased in. Head low, half-hunched down, eyes on Sam as he prodded Goodnight into getting back onto his feet. Then he twisted around, growling, as Faraday impatiently shouldered past the two of them.

Faraday had his head into the breeze, making low, eager noises, and…Sam picked up on it too, that smell. Something to hunt down—that was what they all wanted. 

“Go,” said someone. Red Harvest, now squatting down. He’d gathered together some of the discarded clothing and was shaking the dirt off a shirt. “I will watch.”

Sam nodded and took a step towards the trees. Then paused, thinking about the hunt they still had at their backs. He’d have to deal with that.

“In the morning,” Red Harvest said, as if understanding. “Come back in the morning and we will talk about the rest.”

For another second, Sam hesitated. Then Vasquez started making those starving noises too, as if he hadn’t been gobbling down full-size venison steaks since they’d gotten here…Sam shook his head, then thought how strange it felt, a human laugh in a wolf throat. But it was all right. They’d be all right—and they’d hunt. Whoever was after them, he could come along and they’d take care of him. Because this was _his_ , Sam thought as he looked over them all. 

He turned his head, pointed it at the woods, and loped out, the rest of them following.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW is super-vague about the effect of full moons on werewolves. My take in this universe is that it does tend to exacerbate your impulses, and so if you're newly-turned (or struggling with an identity crisis), you try to get a handle on it before the full moon or you risk losing permanent control of yourself.
> 
> TW alphas have this "power" which can be passed along to others, via killing or healing the very ill. That said, taking an alpha's power normally makes you an alpha only if you're already a werewolf, but Sam Chisolm is Denzel Washington. If anyone's going to break the rules about how alphas get made, it's going to be him. I'm throwing a little true-alpha dust in there and do not feel ashamed about it.
> 
> I realize this leaves an open question about _who_ did this to Sam. But this story was about Sam's post-film character arc (and the arcs of the others), not about resolving another villain. And anyway, it's not a Western if they don't get to ride off to another adventure.


	16. Post-Story: Heat

The whole idea of heat took some time for Sam to wrap his head around. He understood it just fine and he wasn’t squeamish about it. Couldn’t really see how he could be, given this was just how it was going to be from now on. 

“And you don’t think they’re just having us on?” Faraday had asked at one point. “Talking about—about _knots_ and urges and all the kinds of things you’d want for scaring someone away from werewolves?”

“As I remember it, they said it wasn’t any more uncontrollable than any other urge a man would have,” Goodnight had said, stretching his legs out against the ground. “Besides, I don’t know that uncontrollable lust _scares_ many away, though maybe you’re traveling in different circles.”

“I think it’s not till fall, or so they said, and that’s a lot of months away,” Sam had said, as Faraday’s face had started to flush and Vasquez, curled up beside him in wolf form, had lifted a grumpy head. “Lot of months and a lot of ground between now and then. When it comes up we’ll find some quiet spot and just see if it is true or not, how about that?”

And that’d been where they had left it, right up till a day in early October when Red Harvest came in with a map showing a trail deep into the Sierra Nevada, the exact opposite of the way that Sam wanted to go, and dug in his heels till Sam threw up his hands and asked what was the matter. They’d gotten on a lot better since Sam had accepted being a werewolf but the man could still be a pigheaded, cryptic son of a bitch when he wanted to be.

“It’s fall,” Red Harvest said.

Sam glanced around them at the pretty golden birches.

Red Harvest sighed. “It has plenty of water, and no pack has claimed it. I asked Erica and Stiles and they agreed that it is a good place.”

“Well, all right, sounds like a fine place for a vacation but that still doesn’t tell me _why_ we’re going,” Sam said. “We’re just picking up the trail again and now that we know he’s got a base in Canada, he’s going to be heading north and we need to cut him off before Montana.”

“You are not going to want to do that,” Red Harvest said, annoyed. He leaned in a little, peering at Sam, and then sighed. “You will be in heat.”

“Heat?” Sam asked. “What the hell are you—oh.”

Red Harvest sighed a third time, then rolled up the map and turned around. “I will tell Billy and Goodnight to buy enough food in town. They say you forget things when it is on you.”

So they headed up into the mountains, to a tiny valley with the odd deer herd and plenty of water. It wasn’t big enough for any kind of farming and aside from the deer, the wildlife was on the sparser side—trappers had been through at some point—but it had enough room for them to set up a lean-to and a rough corral for the horses. And the water was still ice-cold, for all that it wasn’t fresh off the spring melt.

That turned out to be the first sign: kind of a low, itching fever, sliding around just under your skin so when you peeled off your clothes, it seemed to go down and then you pulled your shirt back on and it’d start up again. Didn’t let you sleep much either, and after the first night, most of them handed their bedrolls over to Red Harvest and took to sprawling out in fur.

Sam stayed with the other man, and kept his shirt on, despite Goodnight’s earnest attempts to get him out with them. “It burns out if you keep moving,” he said, and proved it with the way he kept rubbing his hands against his hips. “Come on, it’s a good ten-minute run down the creek to that fishing pool.”

“Well, you run it, and tell me how the fish are,” Sam said. “Bring back another bucket of water while you’re at it.”

Goodnight let out a half-disappointed, half-irritated sound. He was squatting in front of Sam, a wolfed-out Billy turning up leaves a few yards back, and he started to shift on his feet. His thighs were rubbing together. “Look, I sat down with Lydia and she told me she managed her first husband just fine, and she wasn’t even a banshee at that point,” he said. He paused and looked Sam over. “Nothing’s going to happen, Sam. That is to say—you know how I can be, but you _know_ that, and you’ve been putting up with that since long before this.”

His voice was dropping, going a little soft, and he was stretching towards Sam as he spoke. Down to his shirt-sleeves with the collar loose and open and his throat pulling out of it, showing the natural milk under his tan, and there was that smell coming off him, just a trace now but thick enough that it seemed to stick in Sam’s nose like honey. Coming up between his legs, and every time he shifted his thighs, a little more seemed to rub out.

Sam curled his fingers into the ground, and knew his claws were out. “You go run with Billy,” he said firmly. “Cool off while Faraday and Vasquez are chasing each other, and then I’ll take my turn.”

Goodnight didn’t yet know, Sam figured. Not with the way he just shook his head, reproachful but forgiving about it, and turned around. He dragged his shirt over his head and Sam pressed his lips together, feeling his teeth lengthen against them, and shot Billy a look.

Billy did know, but for some reason he was slow about gathering up Goodnight. He came over, but took his time about it, and stared more at Sam than he did at a naked Goodnight, which just wasn’t normal. Even after Goodnight had shifted, he ended up bumping Billy in the hip to get the man to turn around.

But they finally left and Sam could breathe out. Let his head thump against the lean-to post.

“Why not?” Red Harvest asked. 

Sam turned and looked at him. Red Harvest never, as far as Sam could tell, was embarrassed about anything he said, but occasionally he seemed uncertain about it. This was one of those times.

“This is heat. You will want to, and then it will be over,” Red Harvest added. “Faster than if you wait it out, and then we can go to Canada.”

And Sam, frankly, thought he was too damn old to be embarrassed over anything. Heat was about fucking, he’d gotten that out of what Stiles and the others had said. Just fucking, once you brushed away the extra parts that being a werewolf brought, and just like if you _weren’t_ a werewolf, it meant as much as you wanted it to mean. Which maybe was what bothered him.

“I never chased after this kind of thing,” he finally muttered. Caught himself tugging at his collar again, except it couldn’t get any more open and he’d tear it, pulling any more. He grimaced and just pulled off his shirt; he couldn’t hear or smell Billy and Goodnight at this point. “Most men do. I never held me higher than them or anything, I just never…”

“So this is new,” Red Harvest said.

Sam snorted. “Hell, no. I know my way around, but you see…you see what happens when you just run after it for the sake of having it. And it never is just over. Just a lot of men don’t bother staying afterward, so for them it is.”

“Are you leaving?” Red Harvest asked.

As a matter of fact, Sam had been getting to his feet and Red Harvest wasn’t prone to asking unnecessary questions, so for a second he didn’t follow the man. Then he inhaled and Red Harvest didn’t smell concerned, or surprised. He wasn’t really asking a question.

“No, just going for a walk,” Sam muttered, and then he twisted into a wolf.

Red Harvest raised his brows but didn’t get up, so Sam figured he’d had enough of the questions for now. Which was just fine. Sam wasn’t leaving, and he wasn’t going to the creek, but he had that damn itch and he did need to move around.

For the first few minutes he just loped through the woods, with no direction in particular except away from any of the others. But then he caught the scent of an elk—a big buck, if he was reading the breeze right. It was late in the year for their rut, but the air was heavy with the tang of musk and sweat and a little blood—the blood made something pull sharply in Sam’s gut. Not quite what he wanted—what this heat wanted him to want—but he was hoping it’d help.

The elk wasn’t that hard to track down. It had been in a fight somewhere along the line, with a big, clotted score across the left shoulder, but the injury seemed to rile it more than anything and it had a formidable eight-point rack on it. With a full pack it’d be easy pickings, but with just Sam on his own…

He tracked it for nearly an hour, easing himself around so that the wind was his friend and not his betrayer, waiting for the right angle. It took his mind off things, and as hard as it was, he didn’t feel tired at all. If anything, he thought he felt _more_ energetic at the end, launching himself from behind a big snag onto its back, than he did when he’d first started out.

Of course, then he had to take the elk down. He got a good bite into its neck and his claws into its shoulders, but it was strong and it immediately tried to throw him. His back legs slid off completely, so instead of fighting it, he went with it, shifting just enough so that he could stand upright and wrap his arms around the elk’s neck. A hoof battered his foot and he took it out on the elk, crunching down till he hit bone, and then he got himself braced and was able to wrench the head back and snap its spine.

The elk dropped, then let its hooves fly a few more times. It was dying and Sam just limped clear, dropping onto a nearby clump of leaves to straighten out his foot and wait it out. He changed all the way back since that made it easier to see where the bones were misaligned, then gritted his teeth and snapped them till they rehealed straight.

By then the elk had quieted down, limp, though the blood pooling out of the gashes and its nose and mouth was still unclotted. Sam licked his lips, tasting how sticky they’d gotten, and then looked sharply left.

Vasquez paused, head up, and then trotted forward a few more feet. His fur was matted haphazardly to him, like somebody with wet hands had randomly grabbed at it, and Sam was going to ask whether he’d fallen into a pool when Vasquez came too close and suddenly Sam was snarling at the wolf.

He knew who he was. He knew there wasn’t any danger, and he knew damn well neither of them were dying today but something in him said Vasquez had crossed a line. His kill, he hadn’t eaten any yet, and here Vasquez was coming with his head up and his teeth showing and Sam snarled because Vasquez should _also_ know.

And he did. Sam could see it in his eyes, in the way that his head moved slightly from side-to-side as he thought it over. The way he was smelling, it wasn’t angry—if anything, he smelled curious. Curious and hungry—of course—and a little something else, something that smeared over the rest of his scent, made Sam sniff deeper to try and sort it out. And while he was doing that, Vasquez slipped a little closer.

Sam snarled again, dropping his hands to the ground and pushing back his shoulders. He could feel the fur crawling down his nape and over them. Vasquez dipped his head for a second, but then brought it back up, aggressive. He didn’t smell like it, he really didn’t, he just—his head bobbed again and Sam paused, wondering if he was sick.

Dazed, that was what he seemed like. Moving to the side, then coming back forward again, as if the twist of his body might throw Sam off. He let out a low, semi-puzzled rumble when Sam continued to growl at him, his scent getting more and more strange all the while—

Hell. No, Sam knew what that was. Just—it smelled different on Vasquez, washed out. Maybe he’d been trying to wash the heat out of himself, like Derek had suggested.

The elk didn’t matter, Sam told himself. He pushed himself up onto his feet and Vasquez went up on stiffened forelegs, startled. Then snapped his teeth at Sam.

A second later, Sam had Vasquez by the throat and was pressing the man into the nearest tree-trunk as Vasquez hissed and wrapped his hands around Sam’s forearms. Just wrapped, didn’t pull, even when Sam tried to force his teeth to blunt and ended up growling directly in the man’s face. Fur was still floating around them from Vasquez’s hurried shift human.

“All right, all right,” Vasquez muttered, breathless and rough. He shifted against the trunk, then lifted his upper lip in a flashed, rueful grin as Sam’s fangs came out again. Their heads were level so his legs must have bent at an awkward angle; he proved that right when he tried to shuffle his back up the tree. “You eat first.”

“I can wait,” Sam said. 

It was true. He’d wanted to eat when he’d taken the elk down, fresh blood richly filling his mouth, but it made him start now to think about it behind them. He’d almost forgotten about it.

Vasquez blinked, then seemed like he was going to ask Sam. And then his eyes dropped instead. He sucked his breath, tongue flicking briefly behind his lips, and then, very slowly, lifted his hand to Sam’s jaw. He shifted again, sliding _down_ , and when Sam’s fingers bumped into the bottom of his jaw, his eyes closed a little. His knee bumped into Sam’s leg.

“Thought you and Faraday were taking the edge off,” Sam said, just before Vasquez’s fingertips drifted into the blood slicked around his mouth.

He should just drop the man and walk off. Before he could, Vasquez grinned again, knee pushing harder, deliberate, against Sam’s leg. “We did. He’s sleeping it off.”

The thing was, Sam thought, Vasquez had shaved. A day ago, so the skin rubbing against his fingers when the man spoke wasn’t smooth, but he’d gotten rid of enough of the stubble that Sam could see the sweat pearling out of his skin. One bead slid down along Sam’s fingertips, kissing each of them before dropping out of sight—but Sam could smell it moving down Vasquez’s back if he wanted to, smell it all the way down to—

He pushed at the man, just as Vasquez tried to sprawl his legs further. “Really,” Sam said, and again, he was talking when he should be doing. He wanted to sound sharp but even to him, it came out closer to Goodnight’s drawl. “Faraday?”

Vasquez shrugged, and the motion tugged his throat under Sam’s hand. “What can I say, _guero_ runs too hot, he runs out quick. Me, where I was born, we learn to live with it—”

His fingers pulled through the blood on Sam’s cheek, scraping past the half-dried top layer so the smell of it freshened. Sam went stiff and Vasquez grinned, put his fingers back on Sam’s cheek, and—Sam tightened his hand.

“All right,” Vasquez said, eyes widening a little. He dropped his hand.

It hit Sam’s forearm, maybe not on purpose, but Sam felt his lips pull back from his teeth and pushed in, knocking Vasquez’s knee aside with his free hand and Vasquez gasped, pressed himself against the tree, looking _up_ now, and—shit.

“Shit,” Sam breathed. They were so close that he could just tilt his head and the tips of his fangs would drive right into Vasquez’s lip. “You—damn it, Faraday—”

A flicker of irritation went through Vasquez’s face. “We’re not Goodnight and Billy,” he said, switching to Spanish. “You don’t look like the women who he pisses off either, so they come upset to me and I have to calm them down and then he thinks I’m looking. Idiot.”

“That’s not what I—” Sam twisted his head to the side. They weren’t getting any further apart, he could admit that to himself, but at least then he wasn’t looking at Vasquez’s throat.

But it wasn’t just looking; he ended up pressing them together from belly to groin without meaning to. Vasquez went still, then—turned to molasses, it felt like, his body loose and soft and somehow they ended up flush from collarbone down as Sam sank against the man. Moaned, too, long and gravelly and unashamed in Sam’s ear and this way Sam’s mouth was right in the curve of his neck, within licking distance of him and hell. This wasn’t what Sam had thought.

“Look,” Vasquez said. Made an effort to say, squirming as he was, his hand coming up to brush at Sam’s hip and then flexing back. “You think I want to crawl into your bed all the time?”

“No,” Sam said, with certainty. One nice thing about being a werewolf, it was pretty damn hard to not know exactly where you stood with everyone.

Vasquez nodded, then jerked up as his erection rolled against Sam’s thigh. “So this, this is just—nothing, no?” he said. He paused to take a ragged breath and Sam straightened, or did something, and suddenly Vasquez was slumping back again, the words spilling out of him in a feverish rush. “We fucked, we fucked, I haven’t fucked so much since—he’s _wet_ , Sam, wet all over my fingers and it is so _sweet_ I could suck that all day but we fucked and he’s still wet and I _still_ —I can’t—my skin is _burning_ —”

That was the problem Sam had with it, he thought. But hell, he wasn’t completely lacking a heart, and Vasquez was rubbing up against him, wanting, clear as hell about that, and—knots. Getting it over with. They’d said that.

Sam pinned the man back against the tree by the hip, meaning to tell him fine, they’d do—but when he raised his head, Vasquez moaned in his face, moaned and then chased after the breath he’d let out, chased it right to Sam’s jaw. Licking all over it, lapping at the blood and then, when the blood was gone, lapping just as Sam’s skin. Begging, Sam thought, begging, and when Sam bent his head a little Vasquez took his mouth with a throat-caught, thankful noise that made Sam jerk his hands to the tree, sinking his claws into that instead of Vasquez’s flesh.

Vasquez swung one arm up, wrapping it around Sam’s neck. Didn’t lock him in, just seemed to want him close, since when Sam latched onto the side of his jaw, and then the side of his throat, Vasquez seemed equally as happy.

Then Vasquez shoved a hand between them. He’d gotten it half-round Sam’s cock when Sam took him by the shoulders and pushed him to the ground.

He hit halfway onto his side, grunting, one arm tucked under him and one thrown out. He started to look around and Sam snarled at him, and his head went down quick now. Went down as he spread his legs, no missing that. Or the streaks down his thighs that caught at the sunlight, caught at Sam’s nose, had him mouthing at one before he could help himself.

It did taste sweet. Less thick than he would’ve thought, with the way the smell of it clung inside his nose, like it meant to chain him to the man’s backside. He had to drag himself up, inch by inch, clutching at Vasquez’s body for handholds. Seemed like the man had a mile between his ass and his shoulders.

Vasquez was trying to help, in his way. He reached back and grabbed at Sam’s wrist, yanking up, and then he tried to hump back into Sam, hard enough that he nearly bucked Sam off. Sam clamped down with his free hand, but then had to give that up to try and fit them together, so—the sharp slope of Vasquez’s shoulder rose up towards him and he opened his mouth and didn’t do much else. 

The bite seemed to settle Vasquez and he sprawled back, panting, as Sam fucked into him in one unbroken, ungraceful but deep push. His shoulder dragged out of Sam’s mouth and Sam growled without thinking, then saw the blood trickling down. Sam’s head seemed to come up from an invisible haze—for a moment he stared, wondering when they’d gotten off the tree in the first place, everything had been such a…“ _Shit_.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Vasquez grunted. He didn’t even seem to notice, using that arm to lever himself up and back into Sam as Sam pulled half-out.

Sam grabbed at him again, by the waist and then the hips. Then shoved them both down against the ground. Some leaves whirled up around them and one stuck to the blood on Vasquez’s shoulder—it wasn’t healing right away, alpha wound, but it wasn’t much and Sam—still didn’t like it. Kept Vasquez down with the weight of his body as he twisted over, licked it up, tried to remember how you drew on the pain.

“Oh, fuck,” Vasquez breathed, small in the mouth, like a boy seeing his first horse, and then he rolled his hips back into Sam. 

Whining, still small noises, desperate and begging, and he kept moving, even when Sam tried to hold him in place. Sam slipped and left scratches over his thighs, bit his other shoulder, and it all seemed to egg Vasquez on. The blood in the air mixed with the sweet smell rising up from between Vasquez’s legs, making Sam’s head swim, and when he tried to lift himself to get clean air, Vasquez would shove himself back and more blood would smear out over his skin.

So finally Sam just hooked his chin over the man’s shoulder to keep from biting down. Couldn’t let go of him, not without losing the leverage and they couldn’t stop now, even he knew that, but he pulled his hands away from the soft parts of Vasquez’s thighs, kept them on the ridge of the hipbone, and all right, they’d fuck.

They fucked. He enjoyed it, Sam wasn’t going to pretend he didn’t. The way a good fuck could shake you out of your skin for a while, just send everything else away…he’d known about that before all this.

It was just afterward, when he was lying there, fingers pressing against a deeper cut he’d left on Vasquez’s leg, when his head cleared. Because his head did clear, and he was back in his skin, and he was still in Vasquez but he was sure it didn’t change anything for him.

“Fuck,” Vasquez muttered, a little mournful, and Sam tensed up. Goodnight had always seemed to understand, even if he couldn’t quite stop hoping, but most people didn’t understand why nothing had changed. But then Vasquez wiggled and Sam realized what the hell was going on—what the other man was feeling. “They _weren’t_ lying.”

“Doesn’t seem like it,” Sam muttered back.

They laid there for a few seconds. At some point they’d gone over onto their sides and he might be stronger, thanks to being an alpha, but Vasquez had longer limbs and more weight, and he was dragging Sam more onto him. He moved again and his ass pulled on the swelled part of Sam’s cock and Sam dug into the cuts on Vasquez’s hip before he could help himself.

“ _Ah_ ,” Vasquez hissed, shuddering. Not just hurt, Sam thought, sniffing, and then Vasquez confirmed it with a long, shaky laugh. He glanced down and Sam twisted around enough to see the dirt-smeared, sticky, and very much erect cock Vasquez was annoyed with. “Oh, this—I would like it, I think, if my fucking cock…I thought it would be enough.”

“Give me a second, get it,” Sam grunted, since he was still a little shaky himself and didn’t want to claw anything else up.

Vasquez grunted back, as if agreeing, and then he shifted like he was actually going to get up. Sam grabbed him by the waist and he inhaled sharply, head bending, nape up, and then Sam saw what had startled him.

“I close my eyes for a second and _vaquero_ runs off and starts something without me,” Faraday said, from where he was folded into a loose, bent-knee sit a few yards from them. His hand was in his lap, casually working his own erection, and despite his laidback tone, his heartbeat was going nearly as fast as Vasquez’s. “Somebody should rope _you_.”

“You were sleeping. It was not one second, it was longer,” Vasquez said, switching back to English. He laughed again, still breathless, and relaxed in Sam’s grip.

Every part of him but the part of him closing around Sam’s cock, tight enough that it seemed he wanted to stiffen it back up. Sam snarled, dug his fingers in. The flesh under him flexed, the body under him flexed and a fine cloud of warm, salty air came off Vasquez’s back as the man arched into the circle of Sam’s hands, pressed his face against the ground. 

“Hell, that’s pretty,” Faraday murmured. He’d come up onto his knees and one hand, and the hand he still had lingering near his own cock seemed to want to edge out, to come and touch. 

Sam could see why. He wasn’t blind, even if most of the time he just wasn’t interested, and Vasquez had a good build on him. His height tended to thin him out, but when you got the clothes off, the muscles down his back bunched and rose out against his skin like ripples in a stream.

Vasquez got his elbows against the ground, panting. He shifted again and Sam wasn’t sure what he was doing. Pressed his hips and Vasquez stopped it, dropped his head, moaned. And Sam realized he’d started growling again. He didn’t have any reason to, it wasn’t like either Vasquez or Faraday meant any harm, but…it sat right in his gut. Made him feel warm, even warmer when Faraday went from his hand onto his forearms, sinking down as he crawled towards them.

Being alpha, he reminded himself. That instinct, where they recognized him—usually he had to keep telling himself that came before werewolves became an issue. But right now, hazed as his mind was, he couldn’t really think through that, couldn’t remember why that might bother him.

Faraday moved up a little faster and Sam straightened, raising his growl to a near-snarl, until Faraday hissed and rolled half-onto his side. Some dirt and leaves came up, scattering over his chest and belly, dark flecks against skin white enough to get that cream sheen to it in the sun. 

He laid like that for a few seconds—Vasquez had quieted too—until Sam eased himself down, and then he squirmed a couple more feet over. Kept glancing up towards Sam, checking, till his head was nearly to Vasquez’s hip. He paused there, grinning when Vasquez twitched, then cursed as Sam gripped the man, and then lifted his head enough so that his breath puffed over Sam’s fingers.

“Think I should?” he said.

Sam tilted his head. The muscle in Faraday’s shoulder shifted, too fast, and Sam snarled again. Faraday jerked back and for a moment the man showed through, the wild jack who couldn’t help poking a rattlesnake even as he angled around it. _Good_ , Sam thought, something settling in him.

Then Faraday pressed himself down against the ground. “Should I?” he said softly. “Should I touch him?”

“Fucking—” Vasquez started. Would’ve been snapping it if he’d been breathing out instead of gasping in air.

Sam hooked his fingertips into Vasquez’s waist, just over the crest of the hips; Vasquez let out a ragged breath, going silent. Faraday wasn’t grinning now, but he still had that glint in his eye, even as he rose up and licked at Sam’s fingers. Held Sam’s gaze for a moment, before his lashes came down—long for a man—and he was licking and sucking, tongue working in between Sam’s fingers, worming under the sensitive webbing, and moaning all the while like a starving man at a feast.

He was searching out Vasquez’s blood. Some of the cuts started flowing again, Sam could smell it—made him snarl again. Faraday pulled off, dropped his head, and a little blood dripped onto his throat. Sam reached for that, and just grazed the red with his fingers when Vasquez abruptly slumped over.

No, he’d done that, twisting them to get around at Faraday. Who moved into the hold like he was fitting Sam’s fingers to him like a necklace, bending into Sam’s palm as he nuzzled his way across Vasquez’s groin. Vasquez was talking again, in Spanish, soft slurred curses as he slid his hands up Faraday’s thighs, the darkly-tanned fingers looking for a moment like cages, and the pale skin under like empty spaces. But then Faraday convulsed, his muscles bulging up under Vasquez’s grip.

“Oh— _fuck_ ,” Faraday was groaning, long, so long it seemed unnatural, not like some sound he could’ve made without something pulling it out of him. His knee rammed into Vasquez’s shoulder and Sam heard Vasquez’s muffled grunt, the slight _smack_ at the end, knew the man was lapping out Faraday. “Oh, fuck, fuck—”

He twisted against Sam’s hand and Sam pushed down on it, wanting him still. Had a moment’s resistance and then Faraday dropped like a stone in water. His body smoothed out too, long slow roll down it as he heaved for air, then drank it in. Sam pushed at him again and Faraday moaned just at that, just at the hold on his neck, and then went silent.

Found something else for his mouth to do, said the way Vasquez’s body suddenly shivered. It was straining Sam to stay up so he’d sunk back down behind Vasquez, couldn’t see much anymore, but he could track it by smell. 

The air got so thick he had to lay his head down on the ground and breathe through his mouth. Had to crowd up close to Vasquez, so close the sweat coming off the man’s nape ran into his nose, but the sting of it cut through that thick, sticky, honey-scent. Didn’t really clear his head—just pushed out the clouds enough for him to feel that craving in his gut rising up. The salt—he pressed his mouth against Vasquez’s neck and the shift in their bodies tugged his hand over Faraday’s, and he could smell the salt his fingertips were pressing out of Faraday’s skin. He was _hungry_ , God, he was.

Couldn’t eat them, a small part of him thought. Made him grimace before he thought about it, and then he did, and little by little, he pulled himself back.

By then Faraday and Vasquez had both gone slack, heartbeats slowing, even if their breathing sounded as rough as if it’d been pushed through a sawmill. Faraday shifted once and Sam tightened his hand and he stopped, except for a small, regretful noise. That made Sam think more and he pried his fingers off and craned his head around.

Elk. “Hell,” he muttered, seeing the flies gathered around it.

“Wait— _wait_ ,” Vasquez hissed when Sam’s cock tugged at him. He twisted sharply, then sagged in relief when Sam pushed back in. “Not yet, it’s not gone yet.”

It was going down, Sam thought. Not as crammed into the man as it’d been, but…he blew out his breath.

“So that’s real?” Faraday said. He humped himself up, paused to rest an arm on Vasquez, and then started again like he was going to wedge himself between them. 

Sam grabbed at him—wasn’t thinking about the neck but that ended up where he had Faraday, who stiffened. Then flexed—didn’t relax—his shoulders down, offering Sam one of his don’t-mind-eating-shit-sir smiles.

“Just wondering,” he said, as if those smiles didn’t usually mean he’d shot the shit out of someone. “Didn’t come up with us.”

“Believe they just said alphas,” Sam said. “Also, believe that you said you couldn’t even fathom why that’d be attractive, let alone enough to base a whole stage of life around.”

“Well, I can’t help being curious, with how eager Ale here seems to be for it,” Faraday said. He tilted his head back a little, dropping and then rising, and then did it again so Sam was sure he was rubbing into the grip on purpose. “He’s a hard man to get on his knees, and he was practically belly-flopping for you.”

Then he paused, and it patently wasn’t Sam he was waiting on a reply from. A few seconds passed and his brows knit, and then, just as he was reaching for Vasquez, Vasquez grunted and pushed his head back between Faraday’s legs and Faraday’s mouth dropped open in a groan instead, his eyes darting sightlessly about before they rolled back. Sam sighed, and let go of the man, and sat back to wait it out.

* * *

It wasn’t so warm a day that the elk had spoiled, by the time they got around to it, but Sam still handled gutting it more roughly than he usually would. They probably weren’t going to get a good skin off of it.

“Just string it up and eat later,” Vasquez suggested, though he was pulling some of the liver towards himself. He blinked, slow and tired, and then heaved his shoulders into the shift.

But he was worn out, only taking half a dozen bites before he flopped backward onto his side, legs spraddled wide. He didn’t even seem to mind Faraday’s knowing smile as Faraday helped Sam carve off some hunks from the elk’s back legs.

“So we finally found out what it takes to fill up that hole in his gut,” Faraday muttered. He sat back and licked the blood off his hands, but didn’t eat, even though Sam could hear his stomach rumbling. “You all right?”

“What?” Sam said, still wrestling with the elk’s head. Cutting through the spine with just his claws wasn’t easy. He could just brace his foot and rip it off, but then half the neck would come with it and that was a fair amount of meat. Five werewolves needed a lot and Red Harvest ate plenty when it wasn’t white man’s food.

Faraday lounged out like he meant to nap, and he did smell like it, sated and unrushed. But he was eyeing Sam with a little too much interest. “You still smell…prickly.”

“Heat,” Sam offered.

“Yeah, I know, but Vasquez is clearing up,” Faraday pointed out. He flopped over onto his back, with his head still turned towards Sam. “Not sure if I am. Guessing secondhand isn’t close enough for this kind of work.”

Sam rolled his shoulders against the way they tightened up, then threw a chunk of meat towards Faraday. “Eat something. Can’t hear you over that rumble.”

He twisted and worked at the elk, and finally got the head free. Faraday was staring at him, and then, just as he sighed and looked up, the man shifted and padded over to the meat by Sam rather than the hunk by him. He was limping, even as a wolf. He sniffed at the meat, ate a little, and then turned around and ate half of what was left of the liver. Then attempted to scrub his bloodstained muzzle against the ground before he shifted back to a man; of all of them, Faraday seemed to forget when he was a wolf and when he wasn’t the most.

“It’s just you don’t seem so excited, considering this is literally about fucking your brains out,” Faraday had to say, wiping at his face.

Sam sat back from the elk head and looked at the other man. “Was there something you wanted?”

Faraday pressed his lips together. For all that he couldn’t help trying anything that might get him in trouble, he did seem to have a finely-tuned sense of what that _was_. “I’m just asking—”

“You want me to fuck you?” Sam asked, watching Faraday’s pupils immediately scope out. “Fuck him into you? So it’s him fucking you? Is that what this is about?”

“He fucked me,” Faraday said, very carefully, despite the way he smelled, after a couple seconds’ studying Sam. “A lot. Also, I fucked him. And I might be mistaken, because he won’t goddamn tell me what some of those Mexican words mean, but I don’t think he minded. So—”

“So if it’s between him and you, keep it that way,” Sam said sharply.

Faraday took the warning, he could see that, but he didn’t stop studying Sam. Sometimes it seemed just part of his gambling side, reading his opponents, but sometimes Sam got the feeling it was sheer reckless curiosity. “Wasn’t any argument, you know,” he said. “I mean, I know how we look, you could get mistaken about that, despite my best diplomatic efforts at smoothing over his edges, but…honestly, the way it’s been, I don’t think we’ve had time for more than half a dozen words. This whole heat thing, it is just plain _fucking_.”

That was the thing, Sam remembered. Plain fucking. He had never viewed that like other people, and…he didn’t mind it. Didn’t miss it like most people seemed to think he should. But he’d always figured if he _was_ going to see it like they would, it would…it wouldn’t just be fucking. 

“Anyway, I don’t think he’s going to be running after you any time soon. Well, more than he already does,” Faraday said with a shrug. He gave his mouth and jaw a few more swipes with his hand, then settled onto one bent leg. “He liked that fuck, that was clear, but—”

“So did you,” Sam said.

Faraday paused again, then smiled. Watching for how Sam took it before he really let it live on his face. “Yeah, I did,” he said. He tilted his head. “Wouldn’t mind trying it myself, if it comes up.”

It wasn’t them, either of them, Sam thought. They were just living however they saw fit, same as himself. “You counting on next year?”

“You offering?” Faraday said, a little quick. He noticed, because he immediately flicked his hand towards Vasquez’s sleeping form. “If it’ll save me the trouble of having to drag that greedy son of a bitch off—”

“You want it that much?” Sam asked.

Faraday stopped himself from answering and just looked over Sam. He didn’t quite understand, his scent told Sam that much. His hand dropped to his leg, then inched in like he was going to touch himself, and then he pulled it back. “I don’t think you’re offering.”

Sam didn’t _know_ , and that was the—Sam looked away, at the elk, but that was as far as he thought he needed to take it. He could pile the good parts back into the skin and take it back to camp to finish up. And here…

That smell was still coming off Faraday. Not as much, and it was drying up, but not as quick as Vasquez. And Sam was still—he rolled his shoulders again. His skin still felt too tight. He still felt too much like he almost saw, and then didn’t. The whole thing about becoming a werewolf was him turning around and looking himself and what had happened to him in the eye, but this _heat_ , this seemed to want to turn all of that inside-out.

But…there was a part of him, when he stepped past the elk and towards Faraday and Faraday’s pupils widened again, got wide and full with a different kind of hunger as Faraday tipped his head back and showed his throat…that part of him, it was comfortable with all of this. It knew this, it wanted this, it thought this was so natural that he wondered why he was fighting it.

He dropped down onto one knee, wrapped his hand around the back of Faraday’s neck and waited out how the man surged into it. Then had to snort as Faraday’s knee slipped and the resulting twist of the body spurred a pained grunt out of him. “Vasquez cleaned you out.”

“Not—not quite,” Faraday said, pulling himself back up. He put his hand on Sam’s leg to do that, then slid it up to just short of Sam’s groin as Sam’s lips started to peel back from his teeth on their own. Faraday made a low, soothing noise, and just ran his hand higher. When Sam tightened his hold, Faraday shuddered and then reached between his legs, fingered himself so the smell went thick again. “Your nose tells you that, doesn’t it? Still some left.”

Sam growled. Faraday hummed along with it, a half-mocking echo, and got in one long lick to the underside to Sam’s jaw before Sam threw him down.

* * *

Faraday was a hell of a lot noisier when the base of Sam’s cock started to swell up in him. He enjoyed it, and he seemed to want to tell the whole damn forest about it, going on about how he’d underestimated knots and other nonsense. Woke Vasquez back up, and after a few minutes where it’d seemed like Vasquez wasn’t sure whether he wanted sleep or watching more, the man came over.

He paused to rub his head against Sam’s shoulder, and for a second Sam thought the man meant to angle higher. But when Sam didn’t move towards it, Vasquez dropped down and started in on Faraday’s mouth instead, keeping it occupied while they waited for the knot to go down. The two of them had a rhythm, it was easy to see. Easy for them to fall into, to the point that when Sam pulled out, he half-thought he wouldn’t be noticed.

Faraday twisted over, bleary-eyed and needing a moment to focus. Then he spotted Sam’s hand and managed to flop his arm over it enough that Sam had to stop. Vasquez moved back, freeing him up, and he rolled over and ran his mouth across Sam’s jaw before Sam could start moving again.

“No?” he said, pulling back. He seemed half-joking about it, but he had that keen look in his eyes again. “Got most of that elk left, could live off it for a while.”

“Yeah, that’s the idea,” Sam said.

Vasquez draped himself over Faraday’s lower half, head riding on his stomach. “Going to get bit,” he said, apparently to Faraday. “Always putting your fingers close, Josh.”

Faraday knew what the man was doing and it annoyed him, but not so much he was pulling away. “Just trying to see whether I have to move. My legs aren’t so convinced it’s a necessity.”

“Well, you don’t have to get up,” Sam said, getting to his feet. “Try and show yourselves around dinner, so we don’t have to come looking.”

“Mmm,” Vasquez grunted, approving, and he pushed his head further up Faraday.

Even more irritated, Faraday put his elbow against the top of Vasquez’s skull, but he didn’t push. He laid back down, tracking Sam as he folded the elk meat up into its skin, and then sighed and twisted back around Vasquez. They were both asleep by the time Sam left the spot.

* * *

Sam left the elk with Red Harvest, who saw but didn’t comment on Sam’s appearance, and then went to wash up at the creek. At first the cold water felt good, like it was soothing that restlessness in him, but it also didn’t do much for the dried elk blood on him. He had to scrub at it to get it off, and that started to warm him up, and then he wanted to move. He tried just splashing down the creek a ways, but the further he went, the more his blood seemed to heat up and he finally climbed back out of the water.

He knelt on a gravel bed, then straightened up. Then dropped back into a squat, swallowing against the frustrated noise trying to come up his throat. The water slicking over his body suddenly was unpleasant, neither cold nor hot, like a fake skin clinging to him. He caught himself reaching to claw at his hip and shifted instead. 

Wet fur wasn’t much better, but he could shake himself, as a wolf, and there was something in the way that loosened up his muscles, pulled them roughly against the bone. Then one of his paws slipped and he had to stop and steady himself, and once he had, he didn’t feel like starting up again.

There was game around, he could smell that, and he followed one trace away from the creek. He hadn’t eaten much of the elk and he probably needed to; they generally had to eat and drink more now, and Stiles had told Sam several times that the stories of werewolves going mad during heat had more to do with thirst-induced delirium than anything else. 

So maybe he should go back to the creek. Sam turned around, then stopped, indecisive, and suddenly irritation flared up in him, making him snap at a harmless clump of wild onions. He didn’t _have_ this problem. He knew what he wanted.

Which was the problem, he thought, sitting back on his haunches. He wanted to fuck someone— _still_ wanted that, despite wearing out Faraday and Vasquez, even though he knew it didn’t mean anything. And maybe that was how the rest of the world was, but he wasn’t like that and he knew that too.

Sam pawed at the ground, growling, and then pulled himself together and headed back down the creek. He’d damn well _walk_ it out of himself if he had to.

Except he hadn’t gone that way for ten minutes before the wind shifted and he knew he’d made a mistake. He could smell—

—he was human again, sinking his claws into a half-rotted stump and choking back his snarl, as somewhere downhill, Goodnight and Billy shuffled against each other.

They were wolves right now, Sam knew. The grunting was in a lower timbre than human throats could manage, and then one of them got up and sniffed the air, then let out a questioning sound. Sam grimaced, then shook his head, blew his nose out. He took a step back, then another one, and as Goodnight sent up a tentative howl, he twisted around and headed straight back for the water.

Cold, he thought, splashing into it. He went in belly-deep, then sat down in it so that only his neck and head were above water. You could just outwait heat. Wasn’t comfortable, but it could be done, they’d said.

Goodnight was coming over the hill. He was keeping to the soft leaf litter but every so often he’d knock a pebble loose or snap a twig, so Sam could still track him. He wasn’t going fast enough to be rushing, and when he went through a patch of crackly dried leaves, Sam picked up that he was limping. Sam figured he had time, and he didn’t want to get up too soon; the icy water had just started to numb that prickling under his skin.

Of course there was Billy too, and when his head abruptly pushed out of a bush on the other side of the creek, Sam shouldn’t have been surprised at all. 

He _wasn’t_ a wolf anymore, and folded himself up on a flattish rock, calm as could be no matter how he was smelling, as Sam snarled and startled halfway out of the creek. He dipped his head enough to placate Sam’s instincts, then kept bending over to cup up some water to his mouth. He did suck it down like he hadn’t had any in a couple days.

Sam pushed himself further up the bank and turned around. “You been keeping yourself watered? You know what they told us.”

Billy took one hand away from his mouth and flapped it at Sam. It shifted his body, pushed his buttocks up and they were pretty, rounded things, touching off an ache in the base of Sam’s teeth—he turned around and there was Goodnight. 

Goodnight hopped over a piece of driftwood, naked as the rest of them, his lily-white skin—he was whiter than Faraday under his clothes—gleaming in the sunlight where it wasn’t streaked with filth. Earth and moss and a little blood here and there, his and Billy’s both from the smell, and semen over his belly and something thin and sticky-looking and clear down the insides of his thighs. “Sam,” he started, and then he looked up.

His pupils widened sharply, and behind them Sam just sensed Billy pricking alert. Sam pressed his lips together so much he knew they were bruising, or would bruise if he wasn’t what he was—which was the same damn thing that looked at all of that and wanted to—to—

“Sorry,” Goodnight said. It came out strained. He swallowed twice, hard, and then took a deep breath and stepped back and wide of Sam. He was pinking a little, under the beard. “Hell, Sam, I should’ve…just kind of lost track of things, and yeah, we might have lost the water….”

His feet weren’t exactly hurrying, but it was clear where he was trying to make them go and that was the creek. Something in Sam eased—not the part that wanted to press the other man down and clear off all those stains on him and mark fresh ones, but the part that worried about where that was going to go. Because…they were still themselves, goddamn it, and they could _think_.

“You tied those canteens to your belt,” he managed, and it even came out kind of natural. “How the hell do you lose those?”

Goodnight paused halfway to bending down towards the creek, one hand dipped into it, and squinted up at him. Being a werewolf hadn’t removed any of the creases from his face but it’d…put more vitality behind them. He didn’t look younger but he looked a hell of a lot less _worn_. Especially now, with that kind of blank look on his face.

“I don’t rightly remember,” he said, just as Billy sighed and said, “Do you see belts on either of us?”

Sam glanced over, but as expected, Billy was in a properly deferential position while mouthing off. Then he looked back as Goodnight started chuckling.

“I think it was the moss. Smelled just like honeysuckle in the Faubourg,” Goodnight said, and picked off a bit before he spooned up water. He was messier about it than Billy, almost as messy as Vasquez, letting it run into his beard and drip off his chin. Which turned out to be on purpose, since next he started scrubbing at some matted patches in the beard. “I think this all, this does something to our sense of smell. Makes everything so much more…dreamy. Doesn’t it?”

“Dreamy,” Sam said, rolling his shoulders. His teeth still ached. He pressed his tongue against one side but that just made it worse. He could manage himself but he sure as hell couldn’t stop feeling.

Goodnight picked up on it and squinted up at him again. “You have any of this lately?” he said, swinging his cupped hand around.

The water ran down his arm and onto his slicked thighs and some of that was fresh and Sam knew his eyes had gone red, even as he looked away.

“Goody owes me a five-dollar piece,” Billy suddenly said. He’d sprawled out on his rock, one leg going off into the creek, and as Sam watched he scooped water over himself, then pushed it down his leg. “He thought Faraday would just talk himself into getting his jaw broken for however long this lasted, not into getting fucked.”

Sam sucked his breath over his teeth a little, then heard Goodnight start. When he turned back, the other man was eyeing him with shock that slowly turned into amusement. “Honestly?” he said. He paused, then sniffed. “Oh, Lord, I think Billy is correct. And—Vasquez?”

“I—smelled it on them,” Sam said, moving his hand pointlessly. Then took a whiff himself, because he’d been in and out of the creek and…no, it was there. Washed-out but he hadn’t been raking himself over, and for a moment he regretted that. “I just took down an elk and they showed up and—and none of you are listening to a damn thing they told us. Eat and drink and don’t let that go, they said. Or else this _is_ just going to burn right through you.”

“All right, Sam, all right,” Goodnight said, blinking hard. He put his hands up and Sam twisted away from the sight of him with his front covered in…Goodnight cleared his throat. “Sam?”

“Hell,” Sam muttered. He almost went back into the water before remembering Billy was on the other side of the creek.

“Sam? You all right?” There was a soft crunch of pebbles, as if Goodnight was standing up, and Sam braced himself. But the footsteps never came, and when he looked back, Goodnight was still squatting where he’d been, concerned enough that it even broke through the sweet, slow-dripping smell of him. “We heard you,” Goodnight said after a moment. “You were just going back and forth, back and forth, and we weren’t—”

Billy plinked a stone into the water. “He wasn’t sure. I thought you were just trying to work it off, but he wanted to come up and see if you were taking it bad, because he _did_ listen to all those stories Erica wanted to tell us.”

“Sorry, my memory must be going again. I appreciate the correction,” Goodnight said, dryly enough that Billy snorted and turned over onto his back on the rock. Then he sighed and turned back to Sam. “Anyway—”

“You aren’t in a rush? I mean, you aren’t—” Sam gestured between them.

Goodnight’s brow creased. He took a moment to answer, which he spent studying Sam. “I’ve got inclinations. _Strong_ ones, I’ll admit, but you knew their drift before and I knew as much as you didn’t mind them, you weren’t looking to return them.”

“Well, but this…it is different,” Sam said. He stopped his hand because that wasn’t doing a damn thing, but he couldn’t keep from clenching and unclenching it. One moment he thought he’d gotten hold of himself, and another he felt like jumping all the way out of his own skin. “I did fuck him, Goodnight. Them. I fucked them. And they—when they came up—”

“When they came up?” Goodnight repeated, even more carefully, even before Billy sat up straight.

“They couldn’t walk straight, either of them, even before I got to them and I don’t think I’ve heard Vasquez talk about the saints like that even after the two of them got that bottle of absinthe back in Bodie,” Sam said.

Goodnight relaxed a little. “Oh,” he said. “Oh, well, Sam, did you honestly expect them to have _any_ self-control about this whatsoever?”

“No, but I should,” Sam snapped before he could help it. He grimaced. “I do. I thought I did, anyway.”

“Doesn’t smell like they were running from you,” Billy said, lying back down on his rock.

“Billy, that’s not the point,” Goodnight said. He glanced at Sam, then motioned to the side. “Look, do you want to talk about this…”

Sam stared at him. Then started to answer, except all that came out was a rough, disbelieving noise.

“I can control myself,” Goodnight said, his voice firming a little. “And I don’t have any concerns about you.”

“I don’t know about that,” Sam muttered.

Goodnight snorted. Snorted and looked offended. “Sam, I know you. And even if I didn’t, I’ve been sitting here like I am for a good ten minutes now, and you haven’t done anything except jump whenever Billy—and cher, that is _distracting_ and I am trying to have a serious conversation with him.”

“He fucked Faraday and Vasquez, and now he’s having regrets about it,” Billy murmured from where he was stretching in the sun. “I think we offer…what is your word, condolences, but what is there to discuss? How that’s a bad idea?”

“He’s like that even with this going on, I’m starting to see why you can control yourself,” Sam said.

“Now, Sam, Billy’s just sore because at the end of the day, he’d rather have Faraday disappointed than my riches,” Goodnight said, voice warm with teasing. It still lingered in his eyes, the warmth, but he stopped smiling as he and Sam regarded each other. He looked at Sam for a second longer, then put his hand down on the ground and gingerly eased himself into a sitting position. “Do you want to go? If you do, just say the word and Billy and I will stay here.”

Sam thought about it. And then pressed his lips together, with that low, persistent throb in his teeth behind them. “You really aren’t so bothered.”

Goodnight knew him well enough to answer the question Sam wasn’t asking. “I have inclinations, as I’ve said, but I like to think I don’t keep up so many illusions these days. You want them, you want them,” he said. “I’m not going to resent you for it. You know me, as I also said, and you know that being able to exclusively possess things—or people—is not one of my goals in life.”

“Well, but I _don’t_ ,” Sam muttered, and caught himself gesturing. “It’s just the damn heat.”

“You didn’t really want to?” Goodnight asked.

“No, I did—they did, we all did, but I…I don’t any other time,” Sam said before he could help himself. He still knew Billy was there, and listening, but he was that twisted up, and unable to get himself untwisted no matter what he did, and so he talked. “I do right now, but I’m going to go right back to not wanting to, and…I just don’t see how this doesn’t get into your head.”

“Well, I think I’m a little different here from you,” Goodnight said, dry but not in a mocking way. He shifted against the ground, a trace of discomfort flicking over his face, and then there was that spike of the smell as his legs briefly pulled apart. His nose wrinkled and he scooted himself back into the water without any self-consciousness at all; he just seemed to want to…make it easier on Sam. “And for what it’s worth, I don’t think either Faraday or Vasquez are going to see this as a real change in your position.”

Billy skipped another pebble into the water. “Faraday’s going to bring it up at _least_ once.”

“He can do that, and Sam can tell him to stop and he will shut his mouth or one of us will do it for him,” Goodnight said equably. Then he turned back to Sam. “Anyway, my point is, I think this means exactly as much as you’d like it to mean. We’re all going through it, Sam, we all know what it’s doing. But I think—and I do only have myself to speak from—but I think we all know what we’re doing, too.”

Except Sam didn’t think he did, was the problem. He started to say so and then didn’t see the point in it, and just turned it into an exhale instead. The breeze started up again, blowing across them, and there was prey in it, turning his head. But then it shifted back and instead his nose was filled with the _sweetness_ of them, the two of them, and he—he wanted.

“I think that’s different. You’re right, they aren’t seeing past this,” he said. “But I want to fuck _you_ now, you going to say that’s going to go when this is over? You going to pretend that didn’t happen?”

Goodnight wasn’t completely caught by surprise. He couldn’t have been, not if he was smelling what Sam was smelling, but his heartbeat did still stutter. And so did Billy’s—Sam frowned and twisted around, and Billy was sitting up again, watching them closely. No…watching Sam.

“I’m not going to pretend. You know I’m not good at that,” Goodnight finally said, in a starkly plain voice. But it wasn’t offended or angry, more meditative. “I’m far too driven by my vices. But I won’t hold you accountable for that. And I don’t—I don’t _need_ you that way. I am going to slip up but I can assure you, it’s not because of that.”

Billy wasn’t surprised either. He and Goodnight had probably talked about this, or at least, Goodnight had talked about it and Billy had let the man run on and made his own plans. And for a moment, Sam thought Billy’s plan was to just let Goodnight have what he wanted, tolerating it because he was counting on things going back to the way they were.

“He’s just going to keep it in his memory, because that’s what he thinks he gets,” Billy said, getting up. He ignored the sharp, startled look Goodnight gave him as he waded across the creek and then came up the bank to join Sam. He was still keeping his head down, stooping to scrape some mud off his feet. “He does want you. He always wants you, whatever he can get.”

“Yeah, I know, and you? You want to say anything about it?” Sam asked. The alpha coming up, hearing the way Billy’s tone was pushing even if the way he held himself was correct. 

Something he usually didn’t do. He and Billy knew where they stood, and where Goodnight stood between them, and generally neither of them wanted to upset the cart. Which meant _Billy_ didn’t usually start bringing this up.

Or coming this close, the way he was. Easing himself up, still not looking Sam in the eye but his shoulders were straight out, not hunched, and he was almost flicking mud on Sam, shaking his hand like that. Sam felt his upper lip curl, and his teeth finally lengthened into fangs. He didn’t quite let the growl out, but it vibrated hard enough in his throat, he knew they could hear it.

Billy stopped moving. His hand swung back to his side and Goodnight breathed out, and then he lifted his chin, just enough for his and Sam’s gazes to level with each other. Sam held himself as much as he could and Billy inched back a little—only to push in suddenly. His mouth was an inch from Sam’s when Sam got him by the throat.

He was grinning. “This _is_ goddamn getting in my head,” he said, a little lick in his voice, a fleck of fever in his eyes. He didn’t seem to mind the claw pricking his Adam’s apple at all. “Because I really want him to just fuck me already, and I think I want you to make him do it.”

“Billy,” Goodnight said, a long sag of a sound, relieved and angry and twisted-up amused all at once.

Just like how Sam felt, honestly. “You didn’t get enough of that?”

“He can’t fucking focus. Keeps getting distracted and just wants to use his mouth,” Billy said, with enough annoyance to be genuine. “So be an alpha and make him.”

Goodnight bit off whatever he was going to say, or maybe it wasn’t even going to be words, guttural as it sounded. He’d gotten out of the creek and up onto one knee, and was nearly halfway into a step towards them before he jerked himself back. The drops rolling down the side of his face were sweat, not creek-water, and for the first time he was showing the strain of heat, breathing rougher, eyes switching between dazed and desperately intent.

“Billy, _don’t_ ,” he said sharply. He paused, licked his lips—Billy’s eyes flicked over to it and back to Sam, and for a second the man looked conscious of himself—and then shook his head. “Sam doesn’t really want it, if it’s just heat, it’s not fair to goad him into it. It’s—if it’s that way, _I_ don’t want it.”

This all didn’t mean to Sam what it meant to other people, he’d been thinking. It never had, and even with heat mixing things up, that hadn’t changed. He had an idea of what they felt now—looking at Goodnight, at the way the man was using every inch of himself to hold back. At Billy, too, the way his body twitched slightly towards Sam but that didn’t mean anything, not next to how hard he was looking at Goodnight. But he could hold that up next to what he felt, under all the boiling in his blood, and it just wasn’t the same. He could still tell the difference. And maybe that was what he needed it to mean—to keep that difference in his head, and know that they had it clear in their heads, too.

Billy breathed in sharply and his scent broke, the way sizzling oil did when you sprinkled in water, worry coming up through the sticky glaze of heat. His eyes slid back to Sam and then down, and when his chin dipped, Sam pulled his hand off the man’s neck. He crooked his head a little, baring the side of his throat, and then turned it into a pivot towards Goodnight, who was nothing but relieved.

But when he made to go by Sam, Sam caught him by the elbow. Did his best to ignore how Goodnight stiffened up again, and just made sure to look Billy in the eye. “That what you want? From him?”

“Sam,” Goodnight started.

“I heard what you said,” Sam said. He swallowed, and when Billy’s arm shifted in his hold, he thought at first it was because he’d showed his fangs again. Then Billy looked down and they both saw how Sam’s thumb had taken to rubbing against Billy’s inner arm. Sam swallowed again. “I just need this to be straight. What I do—what you do—”

Billy snorted. Then glanced up and he was grinning again. It still had edges but they weren’t all turned out at Sam; it said something, this smile, instead of just trying to hide things. “I don’t do what you say just because he wants to,” he said. He paused, then turned a little more, sliding forward as he did and leaning close enough that Sam growled softly without thinking. “He and I were talking, whether this would really get to you. Since you really don’t think about it most of the time, I’ve seen that. And I was wondering what it’d be like if you did. You’re important to know—these are the kinds of things I like to know.”

“You bet on it?” Sam asked.

“Not that stupid,” Billy said. Breathed, actually, tipping his chin up because he was a little shorter and this close it mattered.

A little closer and it didn’t, their mouths fitting together just fine. He didn’t fight at all, and with everything Sam had been wondering…but Billy wasn’t stupid. He never prodded something just for the sake of seeing it jump, not like Faraday, and he wasn’t starting now.

His hands touched Sam’s belly. Sam bit his lip and Billy opened his mouth further, let out a whine from deep in his throat as his blunt nails pushed against Sam’s ribs, blunt, he wasn’t trying to gut, just to touch. He tasted so sweet—Sam thought he could taste the smell of him in the hollows under his tongue and behind his teeth, that sticky sweetness that seemed to double up the more Sam tried to lick it away.

Another, deeper, more urgent whine got Sam’s attention, even as Billy’s hands moved lower. Sam pulled his mouth away and Billy dropped his head. Too fast, too close to a bite to the throat, Sam snarled and Billy made small placating noises as he nuzzled gently along Sam’s collarbone. Calculated, Sam knew that, but—

Goodnight was touching himself. Staring up at them from where he was half-kneeling on the bank, his long, sun-tinted hands playing over a cock flushing up against his stomach. His mouth was hanging open so that Sam could see the dark wet pink inside of it, the way his tongue worked as he gasped air.

“Fuck him,” Billy murmured, both hands teasing at the base of Sam’s cock. They slowed as the flesh kept swelling, then reshaped themselves around that extra bulge, startlingly cool against Sam’s hot, tight skin. “Fuck him. He wants it and right now so do you. And I want to _see_ it.”

Sam heard it, the demand. Not the ask, the demand—he snarled again and Billy’s eyes glowed blue. Then the man tried to dip his head but Sam wasn’t about to let him get away with that.

He crushed their mouths together. He hadn’t broken the skin of Billy’s lip before, but he felt it split now. Smelled the blood, and, rumbling in his throat, sucked it up as Billy shivered and groaned and finally, genuinely, bent under Sam.

Which was enough. Sam made himself take it as enough. These were pack members, not enemies or rivals; he needed to know they’d stand with him, not to force them there. He pulled himself back again.

Billy moaned, staggering a little as Sam pushed at him, and for a second he looked as if he honestly wished Sam hadn’t stopped. Then he got hold of himself, grabbing one knee and leaning on it, as Sam twisted around and took Goodnight, who’d been stumbling over, by the shoulder, and pushed the man back against a nearby tree.

Goodnight crumpled like a wet bandana, his knees swinging wide of each other as Sam stepped between them, eyes nearly rolled skyward as his head lolled against the trunk. His hands lifted and found their way to Sam’s side and arm, but they were so limp it was more of a gesture. “Sam,” he grunted, only to drop into an airless whine as Sam ducked under his chin, huffed at the stretched throat. Then he jerked his head, hard, knocking his jawbone into the side of Sam’s head. “Godda— _Sam_. Sam—”

“I do want to,” Sam muttered. He could smell some on Goodnight—but it wasn’t his, it was Billy’s. Too distracted, Billy had said—Billy was slinking around them somewhere but Sam shrugged off the flicker of movement and sniffed harder, then bent for a taste. Got layers, some of it dried enough to flake against his teeth, some of it still fresh enough to slick between his tongue and Goodnight’s skin. “Right now. All right?”

“I—hell, Sam, you _know_ I’m no saint,” Goodnight gasped. He sounded a little odd, shaky and thin, and then his fingers dragged at Sam’s shoulder enough to get Sam’s attention. When Sam looked up, Goodnight’s pupils had widened so that only the thinnest line of blue was visible around them. “But—you’re— _Sam_ —”

Yeah. He knew that. So did Goodnight, no matter how they were, and that…had been something Sam had almost let the heat drive out of his head. That was what he needed to be careful of, he thought, breathing in deep. It smelled _so_ good. Didn’t bother him at all now, how it refused to be shaken but just clung in thicker and thicker layers, so the more he consumed, the more he got. Him, somebody who’d made himself out of the scraps and ashes left by others.

“Want it,” Sam said, the words lazing their way out of his mouth as he lapped sweat up just before it sank its way into the edge of Goodnight’s goatee. 

He pressed forward, bark rough against his knuckles as he bent his hands around Goodnight’s hips, and that line of blue brightened till he had to squint against it. Goodnight shuddered, once, staring right at him, and then closed his eyes as his mouth opened up under Sam’s.

For a while, just long enough to map it out. It was sweet, that mouth, sweet and yielding, but didn’t taste enough of it, that honey. Sam moved on, letting his nose lead him to the arched throat, dragging his tongue to scour the dips that formed every time the muscles there flexed in a gasp. He got caught up there for a while, enjoying himself, barely thinking of the cock riding up under his own, the increasingly frantic twist of the hips under his hands, until something hot and wet snaked across the side of his knee.

The skin under his mouth tried to come up when he lifted his head to snarl. At least, it seemed to, rising before it snapped free with a wet pop that rang in his ears. Billy made small, agreeable sounds and kept licking up his leg, a distraction—Sam snarled again, Goodnight offering up a half-startled, half-nervous counterpoint moan, and then humped back from the tree. Didn’t like the cool air that shouldered its way between himself and the body slumping down the trunk.

Goodnight came sluggishly when tugged, head swinging loosely as if he meant to tuck it under Sam’s chin. Then his weight shifted enough for Sam to spin him and he let out a caught, desperate sound as he dragged himself, now belly-front against the tree. Fresh tree-sap stung the air, sharp enough to cut through everything else, and as Sam wedged himself up against the man’s backside, bits of wood scattered down Goodnight’s back from where the man had his claws hooked into the tree.

One set came out completely when Sam seated himself in the other man. Chips went flying into the bushes, staccato patter underpinning the endless throaty sound that Goodnight pulled out of himself, shaking like every bit was devoted to it. The flecks of wood on his back stuck in the sweat and bobbed up and down as he panted, limp hand bumping into Sam’s thigh.

Sweat was running down his nape so thick that Sam didn’t even need to curl his tongue to pick it up, could just lay his lower lip against the skin to divert it into his mouth. He licked anyway, flattening his tongue over the bumps of the spine, fringe of Goodnight’s hair dusting over the bridge of his nose. Goodnight groaned again, weight tilting back into him, dropping an impossible further half-inch onto Sam’s cock and even Sam faltered for a second.

Something braced them up. Stiffened Goodnight up, just as Sam was trying to lock his knees against himself. Goodnight squirmed against him, gasps suddenly ratcheted up, almost words—Sam’s toes pushed into something rounded but ungiving. Billy’s knee, the other man worming his way between them at the tree. Sam could glimpse his hands, now running up Goodnight’s thighs, now splayed just under the ribs.

“Can’t—can’t—” Goodnight grunted, his hand groping blindly back into Sam.

Too out of it, slapping that way—Sam knew that but he still trapped the wrist, ground it back against his own hip as he growled into the tender flesh behind Goodnight’s ear. He could feel more than hear the judder of Goodnight’s racing pulse as the man whimpered, bowed his head.

Billy answered back, low, uneven, not quite so soft-bellied. Not with that gravelly note of hunger in it, as he worked his way up the other man. He grunted once when Sam lost his footing and slipped forward, pinning Goodnight against him against the tree. Goodnight seized up, seeming to come apart around Sam except for where their bodies joined. There, he was just tightening up, seeming to winch himself down even as Sam could feel the knot swelling. Could feel how it was straining Goodnight to take it, feel the tension around it, and still Goodnight was grinding himself into it.

Got some space open or something, because the black top of Billy’s head got up above Goodnight’s shoulder. Then dropped again, loud sucking sounds starting up as Goodnight let out gutted moans. Like somebody smacking their lips over a honeypot, Sam thought, getting his sluggish arm up to grip in Billy’s hair.

He pulled. Billy whined but didn’t stop suckling at Goodnight’s chest. Goodnight’s toes grazed over the top of Sam’s feet; the man was barely standing now, Sam taking most of his weight and that was why there wasn’t room. Sam couldn’t make it, not locked together as they were, and so he couldn’t fuck into the man like he wanted. He needed space and Billy was going to have to make it.

He pulled again. Billy growled. It was muffled by Goodnight’s body, but it was still a growl. Sam snarled back, half his fingers dropping to scratch across Billy’s nape. No blood— _now_ , his snarl meant.

Billy made a softer, agreeing noise, and gave up on Goodnight’s nipples. Jerked his way up the tree, cursing once as Goodnight’s head fell onto his shoulder. His eyes came up and Sam and he looked at each other, with the air steaming off Goodnight’s skin between them.

His mouth opened and Sam dragged Goodnight up, planting one hand against the tree, right under Billy’s arm. Billy hitched sharply, the black of the inside of his mouth flexing red as he gasped. His arm banged into Sam’s arm, and then he crooked it around and reached between himself and Goodnight and then his eyes shut, his head went back, his mouth hung open. His chin was up, his throat bared, if Sam wanted to get past Goodnight at it.

It went through Sam’s mind. Then Goodnight found reserves somewhere, arching back till the hoarse shout coming out of him cut itself off. He bore down on Sam hard enough that his thighs pulled briefly away. Hurt, skin peeling away from skin, snapping the sticky, thick stuff that had sealed them. And more of it leaking out between their bodies, enough that when Sam pressed his face into the back of Goodnight’s hair, he knew it was sweat wetting it but he couldn’t smell it at all. No salt, just sweet. Sweet and thick and so much it seemed to close over his head as he surged over and over against the other man. He never was going to break through, he thought, and he didn’t want to.

* * *

His head eventually cleared. It had to, way he was. And then…him and Goodnight were still stuck together, smashed into each other on the ground against the tree, and his bones hadn’t yet remembered he had them but when they did, they were going to be sore. Billy had heaved free but just a couple of feet, sprawled on his back with one leg still hooked over Goodnight’s lap as his eyelids fluttered towards a doze.

“Believe…‘knot’ is the _correct_ term,” Goodnight muttered breathlessly, as he quivered with the unpredictability of the truly unstrung. Then he sagged against the tree, hauling Sam after him, and of all things, started to giggle. “Oh, _hell_ , I’m glad we didn’t head into Montana for this.”

Sam exhaled against Goodnight’s shoulderblade, too tired to even snarl about the shift in weight, and something caught his eye. He slanted his gaze over and found Billy’s eyes cracked open just enough to show him looking tired and tolerant and just a little amused. Then he glanced over. His mouth quirked, and then he grunted and flopped gracefully onto his arm. Paused, panting, before he dragged himself around and up against the tree to face Goodnight.

“You want help getting off?” he asked, to both of them.

“Cher, honestly, I don’t think even your talented fingers are going to make the space for that,” Goodnight said. His head bobbed as Billy sighed and then he shifted again. “Think it’s just time, is all, and of course—not meaning to say you’re anything less than—”

Billy grabbed Goodnight by the waist, steadying him, and then shrugged when Sam, who’d been about to bite the man, nodded a hurried thanks. “Stop moving,” Sam muttered.

“I’m trying, I really am,” Goodnight grunted. For a second Billy seemed to be enough and he just caught his breath, but then he tried to sit up. “I honestly am, Sam, it’s just—God, but you are _thick_.”

“Then stop testing it,” Billy said patiently. He worked his way a little closer, wedging his folded leg against Goodnight to stop the man’s squirming. “You’re just going to get him up again, moving like that.”

“Don’t think so,” Sam said. He still put his hands on Goodnight’s hips to hold him in place, but…his head felt different. It was clear, but… _clear_. Not just the bit of breathing space he’d gotten after Vasquez or Faraday. This was for good. “But yeah, ain’t making this go faster that way.”

Billy glanced up sharply and for a second Sam…honestly felt a little dread. Which Billy read, and was amused by, before he shook his head. “I think I’m done too,” he said. He slung his arm around Goodnight, letting the man use him as a pillow, and then casually reached between his legs and rubbed around. “Not dripping out now. I know they said you can wait this out, but with that going, you could smell us from half a state away. Somebody was going to come and see what was going on.”

Goodnight laughed, then murmured some French endearment, mixed in with half an insult to himself. Sam mostly got that by the feel of the man’s voice and knowing him in this kind of mood, but the way Billy softened and just rubbed at some of the scabbed scratches on Goodnight’s side told him he was right.

“All right, well, nobody but game’s coming up this valley,” Sam said. “We can manage a couple days.”

This wasn’t bad, actually. His muscles were starting to burn—being a werewolf didn’t rid him of that, just made it go faster, but faster didn’t mean it didn’t hurt just as much at the start—and the mess all over him and them, he didn’t want to think about how many dips in the creek it’d take to get it off. And also, this…this all, with what it meant when they weren’t mixed up with heat and were all thinking straight now…it should bother him. It was going to bother him, he thought, but not yet.

“Sam,” Goodnight said, making the word a long sigh. He didn’t move, thank God. “Sam, I cannot feel my legs. You know, if this is how it’s going to be, I think it’s a matter of pure _survival_ to keep it to just once a year.”

Billy looked sharply at Sam, warning and pleading at the same time. He’d never plead for himself, but for the man between them…and it wasn’t necessary anyway. Sam didn’t think for a second Goodnight had gone back on what he’d said, and had thought Sam had changed. 

But also, Goodnight didn’t forget these things, no matter what he said about his memory. Yeah, this had happened, but it wasn’t going to get…lost. And maybe that made Sam feel easier with it. Meant different things to him and to Goodnight, but…didn’t mean they didn’t understand each other.

“Just take some deep breaths,” Sam finally said. He paused, then laid his hand on Goodnight’s ribs. His fingertips brushed Billy’s and Billy moved his hand to accommodate, but didn’t take it off. “Use that air for what you need it, instead of wasting it on talking. Not in a rush here, Goodnight.”

“Mmm,” Goodnight said. 

Noncommittal, but the next time he shifted, he pushed his head back and his cheek rested for a second against the side of Sam’s throat. That was intentional—that was the man and the wolf thinking together, the man wanting a last touch, the wolf telling Sam they weren’t about to cross him for it.

Then, hissing, Goodnight levered himself up on Billy’s shoulders and got himself off. “Our dear sweet _virgin of Heaven_ ,” Goodnight gasped, promptly going slack all over Billy.

“Give me a second,” Sam grunted as Billy stared pointedly at him. He might not have been the one stretched out but his skin felt a little loose all of a sudden, like he needed more breaths himself to fill it back up. “One second, then I’ll come help get him off.”

Billy sighed, and let his head sink back against the ground. Didn’t even try pushing at Goodnight to rearrange them better. Fuck him, hell, he’d just take Goodnight drooling over his shoulder, Sam thought, and then _he_ had to laugh.

All right. It was all right.

* * *

“We are stopping by Stiles’ territory,” Red Harvest announced once they’d all found their way, in varying degrees of cleanliness, back to camp.

Sam nodded without thinking, most of his mind taken up with the elk-meat stew Red Harvest had bubbling away over the campfire. He had to snarl Vasquez off it, partly because the man had tried to grab it off its tripod bare-handed…but yeah, partly because his stomach felt like it was caving in on him and he needed at least a taste before he could rein in the wolf side and deal the stew out to the rest of them.

Vasquez retreated, shaking back into wolf form, and then circled back to where the remains of the elk were slung up in its hide from a tree branch. “You can’t be serious,” Goodnight muttered, in unbuttoned shirtsleeves with the shirt-tail knotted up to keep from dragging in the dirt. “There’s more than enough without diving into that, even for your appetite.”

“Tell that to the doves,” Faraday grumbled, as Billy herded a whining Vasquez back over to where the other man was sprawling over a bedroll. “I’m the one who scares them up and he takes them all for himself, just because he didn’t spend half the afternoon with a rock jammed in his—”

He went nose-down into his bowl as soon as the stew hit the sides. Sam watched Faraday slurp hungrily at it, hunching his shoulders as Vasquez tried to nose over the left one. “Meant to serve him next,” Sam said, cradling his own bowl.

Red Harvest looked at him for a long moment, then resumed doling out stew. He fended off a not-entirely-repentant Billy, toed that bowl over to a really pitiful-sounding Vasquez, and then served up Goodnight, who snatched that food up with indecent haste but who’d at least waited till the last drop had fallen off the ladle, unlike Billy.

“We don’t lose a day if we follow the east pass out,” Red Harvest said.

“Yeah, all right,” Sam said, and then the man’s words finally caught up with him. “Now, wait—”

Red Harvest put the ladle in the pot and the put on the ground, and then folded himself back up on the opposite side of the fire from them. He looked at Sam, then at the line of intently chewing men. Then he reached down beside himself and pulled out another bowl. This one was full of a strong-smelling, thick-textured cream or salve of some kind—it didn’t smell _bad_ , just strong. More herbs than Sam wanted to try and sort out; for all that heat seemed aimed to wear out the body, his mind felt more than a little fatigued, and he didn’t want to try and figure out anything more than where he was going to sleep for the next few hours.

“So we don’t have omegas following us all the way up,” Red Harvest said. He paused to pick up a little wood thing and a whittling knife. “I am almost out of the plants I need for that. Laura will have more.”

“ _Oooh_ ,” Faraday said, just before Vasquez, back to a man, shoved his face back into his bowl.

Red Harvest shaved a piece off the wood and sent it pinging against the side of Faraday’s bowl, despite the silent ask for tolerance that Vasquez had aimed his way. Then looked at Sam.

It was still a detour, and while they wouldn’t lose a day, they also wouldn’t have any chance to gain time like if they just took the straight route. On the other hand…Sam looked around at them, noting the way legs were spraddled, strained joints were being nursed, cuts and scratches were still healing over. Goodnight sensed it and looked up, and Sam sighed. “All right, all right,” he said. “Guess you should get to pick our stopover.”

They ate, and then cleaned up. Wasn’t much talking for any of that, aside from the occasional half-hearted curse. Halfway through getting his bedroll out, Faraday just gave up and went wolf and then curled up next to Vasquez’s leg. Vasquez was still trying to shake out his blanket and he growled down at Faraday, who opened one eye, then flopped onto his side so four instead of two of his legs were blocked Vasquez’s path. Rolling his eyes, Vasquez stood there, blanket wadded against his hip, and then shrugged and tossed it down and turned wolf himself to step into the messy nest that resulted.

Billy made more of an effort, tossing a couple stones to weight down the corners before he stretched out, though his usually neat bedroll had some heavy wrinkles down the middle. Goodnight draped his around his body and then crawled in beside the other man, who let out a resigned sigh as he allowed it.

“You aren’t resting?” Red Harvest asked when Sam settled in next to him.

“Still keyed up. I need an hour or so,” Sam said, honestly. He knew his body and he needed to sit, but his mind wasn’t quite ready to let everything that had happened lie for the night, even if it didn’t want to take on anything new. “You can take yours now.”

Red Harvest raised a brow.

“Spell me in an hour,” Sam told him. This close, he could see the way Red Harvest’s hands moved slightly slower, hesitating before each twist of the blade against the…handle. Some kind of handle, notched at both ends, and he happened to remember the moon-shaped slicer Laura Hale used for some of her herbal work. “You took the entire day watch.”

The corners of Red Harvest’s mouth twisted just enough to be seen. Then, shrugging, he wrapped up his tools and drew his knees up to his chest, resting his head on top of them. He wouldn’t sleep deeply that way; he meant to just give Sam that hour and no more.

“Sam,” Goodnight murmured. When Sam looked, the man was still lying down but had shifted a few feet up, so now Billy’s head was at his waist and he was looking at Sam from just a few inches from Sam’s toes. “Don’t think anything’s coming.”

“Well, I’ll just sit for a bit,” Sam said.

Goodnight sighed and tugged at his blanket, pulling it up over him. At the same time his other hand came out as if to knock against Sam’s ankle, the same kind of thing he’d always done. But it stopped short and Goodnight’s smell suddenly went sharp with concern. Billy stirred, picking up on it, but by then Sam had already reached down. He paused too, when Goodnight’s eyes found him. Then, careful so the man would see, he stretched his fingers out. Touched them to the back of Goodnight’s hand, pushed it back from his foot and then, as Goodnight breathed in, he slid his fingers down to lay across Goodnight’s hand for a second.

“All right, I’ll leave you be,” Goodnight said, slow, still looking at Sam. He sounded more like he was telling Sam thank-you.

“For now,” Sam said, and felt something drain out of him when the other man acknowledged that with a tired smile. All right, then. That’s what they were.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...I may have written 93K words just so that I could get a Denzel Washington character in heat. To be clear, heat is _not_ canonical in TW, but it is in the AU I set up in my prior story. There is knotting (alphas only, everybody else gets...naturally lubricated), but it's about as mentally and emotionally overwhelming as you personally allow it to be. You can have casual sex during heat, or you can treat it as just something for long-term relationships. If you don't want to have sex at all, you can also do that, but then heat lasts longer and is basically like a week of hot flashes and short tempers.
> 
> Red Harvest got a little shortchanged in the main story. He's meant to have a background romance with Laura Hale and that will probably be another post-story installment, because trying to shoehorn in yet another relationship would have made the main story even longer (I didn't think it would take that much verbiage to work out the other pairings).
> 
> I'd rather not put a label on Sam, except that he definitely, deeply cares about Goodnight, but normally, it's not in the sexual sense. Goodnight would _like_ sex, but I view him as seeing that more as icing on the cake and not a cake ingredient. And Billy knows sex isn't why Sam is the closest he's got to competition. It's complicated but I think it's closer to a poly relationship than not.
> 
> The idea of Sam as an alpha werewolf (in the TW sense) is interesting to me since he's obviously meant to easily command other men's loyalties, but at the same time, as portrayed in the movie, he's clearly a loner most of the time. I think he'd have trouble reconciling the wolf's inclination to stern pecking orders (as much as I would've just loved him to dom everybody). And anyway, all the men seem to gravitate towards him but they all have some kind of authority issue. So...complicated porn.


	17. Post-Story: Stiles and Sam Compare Notes

It probably made him a bad alpha, but sometimes Stiles enjoyed it when Peter and Lydia argued with each other. They both had strong opinions about the best way to do things and when they started poking holes in the other’s ideas, anything and everything would get dragged in. He thought he’d learned almost as much about their respective pasts from their arguments as from talking to them on their own.

And then the two of them met Joshua Faraday, and Stiles learned that he’d barely learned _anything_. “But still, I’m going to listen to it from here,” he told Sam.

The two of _them_ were sitting on the roof of his and Peter’s cabin, sharing some deer jerky and watching the half-moon rise over the woods. Sam also had a bottle of wolfsbane-laced corn liquor, which he sipped from just enough for his scent to have a slight spicy warmth to it. He’d offered some to Stiles but Stiles wasn’t much for alcohol, even uncut with wolfsbane; he didn’t mind the flavor of brandy in Peter’s mouth at the end of a long day, but otherwise if he wanted to relax, he’d go for a long run. 

Downstairs Faraday was explaining about welded versus wrought-iron bars and breakpoints, getting animated enough that Sam was grimacing every time the floorboards rattled. That one in the corner was working itself loose again, Stiles noted. But then there was a sharp double rap, chair legs slamming down, and Lydia broke in to point out even werewolves would have a hard time surviving impalement, with Peter adding that anywhere above the sternum was too much for even the Nemeton.

“You tested this?” Sam asked.

Stiles made a face. “Not me personally, but there was a really bad war in Europe, about…two hundred years ago? No, more like two-fifty. But they pretty much tried _everything_ back then. Most of the packs went as deep into the woods as they could, it was that bad. My grandmother used to say that some of them never came back out, and that’s why you get stories about wolves who can talk. They’re just those packs who forgot how to turn back.”

Sam grimaced and swigged at his liquor. “Well, wasn’t planning on hauling anybody all the way back here for your tree to put together anyway.”

He started to get up and Stiles frowned. “They’re not done yet.”

“I know, but if they’re talking about impaling…think it’s getting a little far, don’t you?” Sam said.

Faraday wanted to know if Peter or Lydia had ever considered the concept of shielding, to which Peter had something very choice to say about Newton’s laws of physics. At that point Faraday wanted to know who the hell Newton was and the silence that followed was _painful_.

“Let me explain this with an example,” Lydia abruptly said, followed by a faint series of rolling noises. “One concrete enough to penetrate your complete lack of basic common sense, hopefully.”

Stiles shrugged. “If she’s getting the fruit out, she’s almost done. I say give them a couple more minutes. They’re not going to impale themselves around _here_.”

“Ain’t going to blow things up, first of all,” Sam muttered, sitting back. “We’re better guests than that.”

He still looked a little twitchy, though overall for an alpha, he was unusually laidback. Case in point, he’d climbed up to keep Stiles company while the rest of his pack ran off with Derek and Laura to go hunt wild ducks. Most alphas got snappish—at best—with that much of their pack out of sight, and never mind socializing with another alpha in the meantime.

“You probably do have to dynamite it. It’s got six-inch metal walls, there’s no way our claws are getting through that,” Stiles pointed out. He bit off some jerky and softened it up between his teeth, then wadded it against his gum so that the garlic and paprika would slowly leach out of it. “You could tear at the joints but you can’t do that before they wake up the rest of the men, and they have the right bullets. It’s really just about placing the sticks so that any backdraft goes out the front and not across your escape route, and I think they’re just getting distracted by how big of an explosion when you could just use a small one. You could just crack the thing and that’d be enough.”

Sam lowered his bottle and looked at Stiles, then down between their feet. “You sure you don’t want to go down now?” he said, brows rising.

Stiles shrugged, then allowed himself a grin as he picked off another strip of jerky. “Between Derek’s spells and the Nemeton, we don’t actually have to stand up and fight as much as we used to. I think Peter and Lydia both just get a little itchy sometimes, like they think they’re going rusty. They’ll work it out eventually, and then I’ll tell them they’re right.”

“I guess that leaves more dynamite for the bridge,” Sam said after a moment, in a musing voice. He straightened his legs, settling back. “Tight spaces aren’t really Vasquez’s strong suit anyway, and hell if he’s going to let Faraday mess around with a charge without him. That gets them half a mile down the road and then Billy won’t stab them out of sheer frustration at not being able to sneak around worth a damn.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Stiles said.

Sam glanced at him, then allowed a small smile. The man was still looking between his legs, as if he could see through all the roofing and will Faraday into backing off whatever argument about angles he was trying to make to Lydia. But that was the part of being an alpha—if you really meant to look after a pack, and not just your own power—that was never going to go away.

“This war you talked about,” Sam suddenly said. Paused as if he was half-thinking about not asking, and then he set his shoulders. “I was just…wondering, if werewolves have been around so long, and we _can_ live through a lot. You’d think with all the wars and other things…somebody would’ve used that, where people could see it.”

“I think people have. I mean, they’ve tried—that’s why people have books that say with a witch, you burn them, or if a witch or a sorcerer dies, you stake them in the ground so they don’t come back as something worse,” Stiles said.

He’d thought about not answering. He could hear the distance in Sam’s voice, and could tell this meant more than just two men tossing ideas around on a rooftop. This probably wasn’t his discussion to have. But they were still bickering downstairs, and none of the rest of Sam’s pack was around, and…Stiles did like him. He’d had one of the craziest introductions to the supernatural that Stiles had heard of and he’d just shouldered through it, paying attention mostly to the people who mattered to him. That was the kind of alpha Stiles would like to have as a neighbor, and Stiles did have to think about that these days. People kept coming into the area, and while he thought they were fine holding their territory, eventually they were going to have neighbors. So he’d rather they were ones he could pick.

“Yeah. Yeah, true,” Sam said after a moment. “And you don’t want them starting to search out the rest and burn them or stake them…God knows people do that anyway, when they’ve got nothing more than just a rag-doll not looking right, or some leftover chicken feathers.”

“We’re strong and we heal, but not from everything, and when you’re a lone wolf, you can get caught pretty easily. If you’re part of a pack, then usually you just want to keep your pack safe. You get them away and don’t think about anyone else,” Stiles said. He paused, but Sam still just looked like he was listening, not judging. “Maybe that’s short-sighted, but there aren’t a lot of us. You can’t grow a pack that fast, not if you want to do it right.”

“I think we all do what we think is right for what we want to protect,” Sam said slowly. His mouth twisted as he remembered something; he didn’t smell angry, just…uncomfortable. “I left first, didn’t go back for my family till the War was over…they’d sell them on deeper south sometimes, if they heard rumors…”

Then Sam snapped his head up and went still, listening to the faint howls that had lifted into the air. It was just their combined packs, signaling a successful hunt—also asking whether it was safe to come back. That was Derek’s slightly-plaintive tone, and then the other was the one who seemed to pair up with Faraday most of the time. He’d been eager enough to go, but Stiles had thought he’d smelled the man circling back every so often to check from a distance.

Stiles howled back, letting his amusement bleed through. _Come on home, it’s not so bad_ , he said, and downstairs Peter broke off to snort.

“Well, don’t know about you, but I think my man’s taken up enough time in your kitchen,” Sam said. He got his feet under himself, glanced at Stiles, and when Stiles didn’t object, began to move towards the edge of the roof. “We’ll eat and sleep and take this up in the morning, whatever’s still left to be sorted.”

“Works for my pack,” Stiles said, getting up as well.

“Then you tell yours they’re right, and I’ll tell mine he gets a bigger explosion than he thought,” Sam said, flashing another grin.

Stiles grinned back, and the two of them made their way downstairs to deal with that situation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stiles is referring to the Thirty Years' War, and to the medieval-ish legend of the priest who was asked by a wolf to come give the Last Rites to his wife, and found out the couple was from a village who'd been cursed to turn into wolves.


End file.
